The Mystery of a Hansom Cab

First published in Melbourne in 1886, Fergus Hume’s mystery became one of the best selling detective novels of the Victorian era. A man is found dead in the back of a hansom cab, poisoned by chloroform, and the stranger who shared his ride has vanished into the night. Detective Gorby follows the trail through the drawing rooms and slums of colonial Melbourne, where new wealth and old secrets prove closely linked. Hume, a young lawyer, wrote it to sell and sold it brilliantly, outpacing early Sherlock Holmes in sales and proving that a crowded modern city made ideal ground for crime fiction. This free PDF and EPUB edition brings back an early landmark of the detective genre.