Heedless of the fate that has befallen his predecessor, Captain Maxime d'Aulnay bravely takes his seat on the Académie Française, makes his inaugural speech and promptly drops dead. The curse of the Haunted Chair has struck again! Both deaths could be rationally explained where it not for the extraordinary coincidence of their timing on the very day if not the exact moment of their inauguration to the 40th position in the Academy, each of them following the delivery of a mysterious, vaguely threatening letter believed to have come from the enigmatic Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox, occultist, cabbalist, expert in ancient Egyptian lore, the author of 'Surgery of the Soul'. Blackballed by the Academy, rumours abound that Eliphas has used the secrets of Toth to seek revenge, placing a curse on anyone who dares to take the Chair in his place. Who will dare to put themselves forward for a position that could mean almost certain death?
Leroux's Le fauteuil hanté is delightfully silly stuff. Ancient Egyptian curses, walking boxes loitering on the dark, misty streets of Paris, deadly rays of light, killing melodies, menacing giants and ferocious hounds - the life of an academic is a dangerous one indeed! Leroux has tremendous fun at the expense of the academics, ridiculing their stuffiness, snobbery and minds closed to anything that falls outside the boundary of their rational knowledge, but really, The Haunted Chair is just a great situation for a classic pulp crime adventure and it fits the bill extremely well. Very entertaining.
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