The Mystery of a Hansom Cab

In the dead of night on a lonely Melbourne street, a cabbie discovers to his horror that his drunken passenger has been murdered -- poisoned with a chloroform-saturated handkerchief. The killer, his motive, and even the victim's identity are unknown. The last person to be seen in the victim's company cannot be identified and has vanished into the streets of the Australian metropolis. The solution lies within a labyrinth of dark secrets, missing papers, evasive witnesses, and a deadly game of blackmail.
Ever since the publication of this 1886 mystery, the two-wheeled carriage known as a hansom cab has been linked in the popular imagination with sinister affairs. The Mystery of a Hansom Cab was the unlikely first literary product of a young barrister's clerk and quickly rose from its obscure initial publication to become one of the 19th century's bestselling detective novels. Reputed to have inspired the creation of Sherlock Holmes, this ingeniously plotted, fast-paced, and engrossing tale remains a delight for lovers of Victorian mysteries.


About the Author
English novelist Fergus Hume (1859-1932) spent most of his life in New Zealand and Australia, self-publishing The Mystery of a Hansom Cab in 1886. Renowned as the most sensationally popular crime and detective novel of the 19th century, its success prompted Arthur Conan Doyle to assay the genre with A Study in Scarlet, which featured the debut of Sherlock Holmes.