7 h 34 minAudiobook13 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What dreadful secret can hide behind the old stone houses of a quiet Paris island?
In The Bloody Doll, Gaston Leroux brings mystery and gothic dread to the Île Saint-Louis, a small island in the Seine. Old houses and quiet quays frame a tale of obsession, dark secrets and murder. The setting invites you to look beyond the calm street, toward hidden lives and a crime that must be solved.
Leroux brings a reporter’s eye to this dark world. His work in journalism and the courts shapes his fiction, where suspense meets strong feeling. Here, the pleasure lies in the slow uncovering of secrets: dramatic exchanges, sudden danger and long talks that sort out what is known. Read for the gathering unease, rather than the pace of a modern police story.
What you’ll discover
- A quiet island’s shadows Explore an old Paris quarter where stone houses and quiet quays frame dark secrets.
- Obsession at the heart Enter a gothic mystery whose darkness draws on obsession, hidden lives and murder.
- A reporter’s eye Discover crime fiction shaped by Leroux’s experience as a journalist and court reporter.
- Secrets revealed slowly Savour suspense in small doses as the story gradually uncovers what lies beneath.
- Drama and sudden danger Find strong feelings and searching conversations in the dramatic style of early French mystery.
Who will love it
For readers who love candlelit mysteries, haunted old mansions, vampire lore with a scientific edge, and stories told by a narrator whose confessions you are never sure you can trust.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A poet spies from behind his curtains
- The handsome stranger and the night of the blow
- Christine's bargain and the library of the Marquis
- Four portraits that all show the same man
- The Indian doctor, the dancer, and a living ghost
- The bundle tied with a black ribbon
- Surgery by firelight and a prosector's dangerous idea
- A pinprick, a bottle, and a dying woman's story
- Ugliness, doubles, and the telling of the tale
Who’s who
- Bénédict MassonA poet and art bookbinder who thinks himself too ugly to be loved and spies on the woman he adores from behind his curtains.
- Christine NorbertThe watchmaker's daughter, a calm and gifted artist who hides a stranger in a wardrobe and needs a friend she can trust.
- GabrielA handsome young man in a Revolution-era cape who appears from a cabinet and brings danger to the household that shelters him.
- Jacques CotentinChristine's cousin and fiancé, a brilliant medical prosector who works in secret on the boundary between life and death.
- NorbertThe old watchmaker who chases perpetual motion with square wheels and is driven by something he will not explain.
- Marquis de CoulterayA hearty, white-haired nobleman whose face matches four portraits of his ancestors and who needs Christine near him.
- The MarquiseThe marquis's pale English wife, convinced that her husband is an ancient vampire and begging for someone to believe her.
- Saïb KhanA famous Indian doctor who hypnotizes the marquise back to health and smiles like the first Coulteray in the portraits.
Formats and delivery
- eBook
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 7 h 34 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 13 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Read and hear La Poupée sanglante in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
La Poupée sanglante
by Gaston Leroux · 1923
A lonely bookbinder spies on his neighbor's daughter and sees a stranger step out of a wardrobe.
Easy read5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
The Bloody Doll is a Gothic mystery by Gaston Leroux, the French writer who also created the Phantom of the Opera. It is set in Paris in the years after the First World War, and its stage is one quiet corner of the Île Saint-Louis, where old mansions, small shops and a sleepy street hide a great deal more than they show.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A poet spies from behind his curtains
The novel opens on a quiet street of the Île Saint-Louis, then called Rue du Saint-Sacrement-en-l'Isle. Here Bénédict Masson keeps a small shop where he binds fine books and also sells postcards and stationery. The narrator tells us this tiny neighborhood will give birth to one of the strangest adventures of the age, one that Paris still remembers with a shudder.
Bénédict is about thirty-five and lives in a room he believes once belonged to the poet Baudelaire. He keeps a day-by-day record of his life, and most of the early chapters are simply his memoirs. The narrator warns us that some people think these pages were written to make a monster look innocent. He himself finds them sincere, even where they ramble.
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What is The Bloody Doll about?
It follows Bénédict Masson, an ugly and lovesick bookbinder on the Île Saint-Louis, who spies on Christine Norbert and her hidden guest, then enters the mansion of a marquis whose wife believes he is an undying vampire.
Who wrote The Bloody Doll and when?
Gaston Leroux wrote it, the French author of The Phantom of the Opera. It belongs to the early twentieth century, in a Paris still living with the changes brought by the First World War.
Is the Marquis de Coulteray really a vampire?
That is the question the novel keeps open. The marquise says yes, Christine calls her mad, and Bénédict finds medical facts that fit both a legend and a scientific crime.
The author
Gaston Leroux
1868–1927 · French mystery novelist
Gaston Leroux was a French author and journalist born in Paris in 1868. He wrote mystery novels, including The Mystery of the Yellow Room, published in 1907, and The Phantom of the Opera, serialized in 1909–1910. He later lived in Nice, where he died in 1927.
More by Gaston Leroux
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