Mostly sold by puffing

His first and most successful novel and the only one I’ve read was The Mystery of a Hansom Cab published in 1886, a murder mystery which outsold Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet. It is certainly second rate but easy holiday reading perhaps. Old fashioned of course, but just about worth a browse if old fashioned isn’t a drawback.

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is a mystery fiction novel by English writer Fergus Hume. The book was first published in Australia in 1886. Set in Melbourne, the story focuses on the investigation of a homicide involving a body discovered in a hansom cab, as well as an exploration into the social class divide in the city. The book was successful in Australia, selling 100,000 copies in the first two print runs. It was then published in Britain and the United States and went on to sell over 500,000 copies worldwide, outselling the first of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels, A Study in Scarlet (1887).

Look at that moustache too. If that doesn’t deserve more renown I don’t know what does. As I’ve been an avid secondhand bookshop browser for over forty years I find it mildly surprising that I never so much as plucked a single one of Hume’s books from the shelves.

Conan Doyle didn’t think much of Hansom Cab though, describing it as a slight tale, mostly sold by ‘puffing’. Perhaps he was right. I’m not sure if I’ll read another after Hansom Cab, but having downloaded twenty onto my Kindle I may try one more.

Not quite the same as the musty delights of a secondhand bookshop though is it? We don’t usually pull twenty books off the shelves on a whim. A curious footnote is supplied by Hume’s 1896 preface to a revised edition of Hansom Cab written after his return to England, by which time the book was extremely successful.

Several people before and since my arrival in England, have assumed the authorship of the book to themselves; and one gentleman went so far as to declare that he would shoot me if I claimed to have written it. I am glad to say that up to the present he has not carried out his intention.