12 h 0 minAudiobook3 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when love pulls one way and dark powers pull the other?
In A Son of Perdition, Fergus Hume brings the pace of a crime writer to an occult romance of temptation and danger. Good and evil stand in conflict, while love faces the pull of darkness. The title points toward a person close to ruin, giving the story a question that keeps its edge: what does a fall from grace involve?
This Gothic tale belongs to an age fascinated by spiritualism, secret societies and forces hidden behind everyday life. Hume carries that curiosity into direct sentences and brisk chapters, keeping questions alive as the supernatural takes hold. The manners belong to their Edwardian setting, but the struggle at the heart of the book is plain: the contest between right and wrong.
What you’ll discover
- Love against darkness Explore a romance where affection and temptation pull in opposing directions.
- The lure of hidden powers Enter an occult world shaped by dark magic and the threat of ruin.
- A crime writer's pace Follow brisk chapters that bring Hume's mystery writing habits into supernatural fiction.
- An Edwardian atmosphere Encounter the manners of a period drawn to spiritualism and secret orders.
- Good and evil contend Consider the struggle between right and wrong through a tale of danger and temptation.
Who will love it
For readers who love Edwardian thrillers, ghost stories and tales of dark magic, and anyone curious about Fergus Hume beyond his detective work.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- An age hungry for the occult
- Hume brings detective habits to magic
- Good and evil as a contest
- How to read it today
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Ein Sohn des Verderbens
by Fergus Hume · 1912
Love and temptation meet hidden powers in a supernatural contest of conscience against darkness.
Medium level10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
A Son of Perdition is an occult romance by Fergus Hume, the English-born writer who grew up in New Zealand and made his name with detective fiction. It belongs to the early twentieth century, when many readers in Britain were fascinated by spiritualism, secret societies and hidden forces behind everyday life.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
An age hungry for the occult
Books like this came out of a time when séances, mediums and secret orders were talked about in drawing rooms and newspapers. Many people felt that science had explained a great deal but left the deepest questions open. Fiction about hidden powers offered a way to play with those questions.
Writers of the period often set strange forces inside an ordinary, well-mannered society. A quiet English house or a fashionable London circle could hide something sinister. The contrast between polite surfaces and buried dread gave these stories much of their charge.
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Who wrote A Son of Perdition?
It was written by Fergus Hume, a novelist born in England in 1859 and raised in New Zealand. He is best remembered for his detective novel The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, but he wrote many other books.
What kind of book is A Son of Perdition?
It is an occult romance, a popular form of early twentieth century fiction that mixes love story, suspense and supernatural danger. Readers meet hidden powers, moral tests and a struggle between good and evil.
What does the title A Son of Perdition mean?
The phrase comes from the Bible, where it names someone doomed to destruction. In fiction it suggests a person who has fallen or is near ruin, and it signals the moral stakes of the story.
The author
Fergus Hume
1859–1932 · English mystery novelist
Fergus Hume (1859–1932) was a British novelist born in England. He grew up in Dunedin, New Zealand, and moved to Melbourne, Australia, in 1885. He published The Mystery of a Hansom Cab in 1886. He returned to England in 1888 and continued writing crime novels, including The Green Mummy.
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