The Mystery of a Hansom Cab
Book Excerpt
My mind made up on this point, I enquired of a leading Melbourne bookseller what style of book he sold most of He replied that the detective stories of Gaboriau had a large sale; and as, at this time, I had never even heard of this author, I bought all his works--eleven or thereabouts--and read them carefully. The style of these stories attracted me, and I determined to write a book of the same class; containing a mystery, a murder, and a description of low life in Melbourne. This was the origin of the "Cab." The central idea i.e. the murder in a cab--came to me while driving at a late hour to St. Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne; but it took some time and much thought to work it out to a logical conclusion. I was two months sketching out the skeleton of the novel, but even so, when I had written it, the result proved unsatisfactory, for I found I had not sufficiently well concealed the mystery upon wh
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Readers reviews
Extremely enjoyable mystery. Right from the beginning, readers will taste the mystery. Sometimes, it will seem to you that you know who the murderer is but it's not so simple :-)! A lot of twists...Enjoy :-)
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Hume was a prolific author and I look forward to reading more of his books.
It has all the ingredients of a good detective novel: Unexpected turns in the plot, putting you (and the detective, by the way) on the wrong leg and an unexpected ending, although "experienced" readers of the genre might not find it too unexpected. But remember that it is more than 100 years old and still a good read.