The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886) is a mystery novel by Fergus Hume. An immediate bestseller for Hume, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is a gripping novel with an atmospheric intensity and tightly wound mystery worthy of the best of Victorian fiction. Published the year before Arthur Conan Doyle’s debut, A Study in Scarlet (1887), Hume’s novel became the first international bestseller to be published in Australia. Adapted countless times for film, theater, radio, and television, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is a classic detective story and a landmark in Australian literature.

In Melbourne, Australia, a cabman stops to pick up a presumably drunk passenger. Helped into the cab by an unknown man, who claims to be a friend, the gentleman settles in for the ride homeward. Accustomed to such things, especially in the darkness of early morning, the cabman begins his ride. When he asks his passenger for directions, however, he receives no response, and turns to find that the man is dead. He drives straight to the local police station, where Detective Gorby begins his investigation. Was the friend in fact the murderer, or was he simply a good Samaritan who believed he was helping a drunk man make it home? When the killer is discovered, however, the mystery remains. Over the story looms the shadow of the Frettlby family, whose secrets threaten to smother all of Melbourne. The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is a masterpiece of slow-burning suspicion between the rich and the poor, a story of law and those willing to break it.

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