"The Mystery of a Hansom Cab" takes place in Melbourne, Australia and involves an investigation into a homicide, after a corpse is discovered in the evening, in a hansom cab. The city of Melbourne plays a significant role in the plot and, as the author describes: "Over all the great city hung a cloud of smoke like a pall." The killer's identity is not as significant a revelation in the story as are the roles of the influential and secretive Frettlby family, and their secret: they have an illegitimate daughter living on the streets. The class divide between Melbourne's wealthy and less fortunate is addressed throughout the plot. The protagonist in the novel is a policeman named Detective Gorby, who is given the task of solving the murder. As Hume describes the character's investigative skills: "He looked keenly round the room, and his estimate of the dead man's character was formed at once." The author commented in a later introduction, "All of the scenes in the book, especially the slums, are described from personal observation; and I passed a great many nights in Little Bourke Street, gathering material". At this time, the street had gained notoriety as a place frequented by prostitutes and criminals.
About the Author: Fergusson Wright Hume (8 July 1859 - 12 July 1932), known as Fergus Hume, was a prolific English novelist. Hume was born in England, the second son of James Hume. When he was three the family emigrated to Dunedin, New Zealand, where he was educated at Otago Boys' High School and studied law at the University of Otago. He was admitted to the New Zealand bar in 1885. Shortly after graduation Hume relocated to Melbourne, Australia, where he obtained a job as a barristers' clerk. He began writing plays, but found it impossible to persuade the managers of Melbourne theatres to accept or even to read them. 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 (British academic, newspaper columnist and author) 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. After the success of his first novel and the publication of another, Professor Brankel's Secret (c. 1886), Hume returned to England in 1888. He 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.