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Australian author Fergus Hume is the author of the mystery fiction book The Mystery of a Hansom Cab. In 1886, Australia released the book for the first time. The plot, which is set in Melbourne, focuses on the investigation of a homicide in which a body was found in a hansom cab and also explores the social class disparity in the city. After that, it was released in both Britain and the United States. It eventually sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide, outpacing Arthur Conan Doyle's debut Sherlock Holmes book, A Study in Scarlet (1887). The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is set in Melbourne,…mehr

Produktbeschreibung
Australian author Fergus Hume is the author of the mystery fiction book The Mystery of a Hansom Cab. In 1886, Australia released the book for the first time. The plot, which is set in Melbourne, focuses on the investigation of a homicide in which a body was found in a hansom cab and also explores the social class disparity in the city. After that, it was released in both Britain and the United States. It eventually sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide, outpacing Arthur Conan Doyle's debut Sherlock Holmes book, A Study in Scarlet (1887). The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is set in Melbourne, Australia, and centers on an inquiry into a murder that occurs when a victim is found in a hansom cab early in the morning. The author used Melbourne extensively in the story, saying that "Overall the enormous metropolis hung a cloud of smoke like a pall." The involvement of the influential and secretive Frettlby family, as well as their secret-that they have a daughter living on the streets and that the lady everyone believes to be their daughter is not their daughter-are more important revelations in the plot than the killer's identity.
Autorenporträt
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.