Blockbuster! Fergus Hume and The Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Lucy Sussex

It has since been made into three films, a play, a radio play and a telemovie, and was one of Text’s inaugural classics. It was a huge bestseller in Australia before going on to big sales on both sides of the Atlantic. Most appealing…is the wonderful flavour of 1880s Melbourne, from the gaslit glamour of the Collins Street “block” to the hideous squalor of the slum alleys off Little Bourke Street…A splendidly romantic melodrama, full of period charm, and Victorian sentiment… The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is not only a classic but hugely enjoyable as well.Mystery of a Hansom Cab was a late Victorian publishing phenomenon. The plot sweeps through unexpected twists and turns…and the suspense is maintained to the end. ‘This novel was a phenomenal success when it was first published in Melbourne in 1886 and it became an international bestseller-It’s easy to see why. Written more than 100 years ago, this murder mystery sold hundreds of thousands of copies around the world…It will give you a sense of Melbourne’s history-you’ll hear the hansoms rattling down Collins Street for weeks afterwards.’ Herald Sun ‘Australia’s original blockbuster is back in print. ‘One of the hundred best crime novels of all time.’ Sunday Telegraph Simon Caterson is a Melbourne-based freelance writer and the author of Hoax Nation: Australian Fakes and Frauds from Plato to Norma Khouri. It was a sensation and soon sold over twenty thousand copies in Melbourne. When he couldn’t find a publisher for The Mystery of a Hansom Cab he published it himself.

Desperate to become a playwright but having no success, Hume decided to write a murder novel instead. He was admitted to the bar in 1885 and moved to Melbourne in the same year. His family soon emigrated to New Zealand, where Hume qualified as a lawyer.

With its panoramic depiction of a bustling yet uneasy city, Hansom Cab has a central place in Australian literary history and, more importantly, it remains highly readable.įergus Hume was born in England in 1859. Set in the charming and deadly streets of Melbourne, this vivid and brilliantly plotted murder thriller tells the story of a crime committed by an unknown assassin. Over a century later, it has lost none of its page-turning power. It includes an introduction by Simon Caterson.įirst published in 1886, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab was an overnight sensation, selling hundreds of thousands of copies around the world and being translated into eleven languages. Other reprints have relied on later versions in which local details are ommitted and language is bowdlerised. This edition for the first time reproduces the text of the original Melbourne edition printed by Kemp and Boyce in 1886. Fergus Hume’s sensational novel The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is Australia’s original blockbuster and international best-selling crime novel.

Blockbuster! Fergus Hume and The Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Lucy Sussex