• New Zealand Literature
• Novels

• Type: Novel
• Length: 260 pages

Truth is said to be stranger than fiction, and certainly the extraordinary murder which took place in Melbourne on Thursday night, or rather Friday morning, goes a long way towards verifying this saying. A crime has been committed by an unknown assassin, within a short distance of the principal streets of this great city, and is surrounded by an impenetrable mystery. Indeed, from the nature of the crime itself, the place where it was committed, and the fact that the assassin has escaped without leaving a trace behind him, it would seem as though the case itself had been taken bodily from one of Gaboreau's novels, and that his famous detective Lecoq alone would be able to unravel it.The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, Fergus Hume

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is a 1886 novel by New Zealand author Fergus Hume. The murder mystery is the most commercially successful detective novel of the 19th and early 20th century. - AsNotedIn

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 which the whole interest of the book depended.... All 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.Fergus Hume, Preface to the revised edition of The Mystery of a Hansom Cab

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• Melbourne, AU, Victoria A hansom cab drove up to the police station in Grey Street, St Kilda, and the driver made the startling statement that his cab contained the body of a man who he had reason to believe had been murdered.