Fergus Hume

Broschiertes Buch

The Disappearing Eye

Beschreibung

A brisk, breathless puzzle wrapped in fog and gaslight, The Disappearing Eye draws you into a London where perception and reality slip like a hansom cab through a narrow alley. Fergus Hume crafts a compact, gripping victoria-era crime thriller that feels both intimate and expansive. Through a deft braid of disappearance and deceit, the tale threads a keen period detective fiction with a modern sensitivity to motive, misdirection, and the claustrophobic psychology of a city under scrutiny. The mystery moves with clarity and nerve, delivering a fresh sense of wonder for classic mystery readers while feeding scholars of Victorian England with a precise, atmosphere-rich backdrop-dim parlours, lamplit streets, and the murmur of urban life in a time of rapid change. This edition is more than a reprint: it is a restored cultural treasure, curated by Alpha Editions for today's and tomorrow's readers. Out of print for decades, it returns with the care owed to a work that influenced the genre's cadence and mood, a touchstone for those who relish an Edgar Allan Poe vibe in the discipline of deduction. The Disappearing Eye speaks to casual readers and academic study readers alike, offering a compact, luminous dose of intrigue that honours its period while speaking directly to modern tastes. A true collector's item, it invites renewed discussion of illusion and truth in victorian mystery and its enduring fascination with misperception.

Autor

Fergusson Wright Hume (1859 - 1932), known as Fergus Hume, was a prolific English novelist. Finding that the novels of Émile Gaboriau were then very popular in Melbourne, Hume obtained and read a set of them and determined to write a novel of the same kind. The result was The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, set in Melbourne, with descriptions of poor urban life based on his knowledge of Little Bourke Street. It was self-published in 1886 and became a great success. Because he sold the British and American rights for 50 pounds, however, he reaped little of the potential financial benefit. It became the best-selling mystery novel of the Victorian era; in 1990 John Sutherland called it the "most sensationally popular crime and detective novel of the century". This novel inspired Arthur Conan Doyle to write A Study in Scarlet, which introduced the fictional consulting detective Sherlock Holmes. Doyle remarked, "Hansom Cab was a slight tale, mostly sold by 'puffing'." After the success of his first novel and the publication of another, Professor Brankel's Secret (c.?1886), Hume returned to England in 1888. His third novel was titled Madame Midas and it was based on the life of the mine and newspaper owner Alice Ann Cornwell. This book became a play and her estranged husband, John Whiteman, sued over its content. Hume resided in London for a few years and then moved to the Essex countryside where he lived in Thundersley for 30 years. Eventually he produced more than 100 novels and short stories.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Alpha Editions
• Seitenzahl: 232
• Erscheinungstermin: 17. August 2021
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 14mm
• Gewicht: 383g
• ISBN-13: 9789354945106
• ISBN-10: 9354945104
• Artikelnr.: 62492342