Mystery

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab

by Fergus Hume

A man is found dead in a hansom cab on the St Kilda Road in Melbourne, and the passenger who got out on the way has vanished. Fergus Hume, a young barrister’s clerk, published it at his own expense in Melbourne in 1886, a year before the first Sherlock Holmes story, and it became one of the bestselling detective novels of the century. He had sold the rights for fifty pounds, and went on to write well over a hundred more.

The librarian

Read it in the Library After Dark Or read it as plain text

Reading time

About 5 hr 55 min

Where to find it

The Australian Room, at the Antipodes

Edition

Project Gutenberg, eBook #4223. In the public domain in the United States.