Works in this genre are usually novella length: longer than a traditional short story, but shorter than a novel.
Their plots include an unexplained mystery that is later explained via rationality and scientific fact.
[2][3] Arbes was a translator of Edgar Allan Poe[4] and often drew upon Poe's supernatural themes in his work, calling the writer a "great model" with "[an] unusual knack for evoking fear in the reader via cold logical construction."
[2] In this story, a painting by Franz Xaver Palko is believed to contain a magical cipher that leads to a hidden treasure, but the "treasure" in question is merely an obsessive knowledge that leads to the protagonist's death.
Jan Neruda, the managing editor of the magazine, coined the term "romanetto"[2]-- an italic diminutive version of the Czech word román, or "novel."