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Audiobook edition · 10 h 2 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
Two men enter a cab on a foggy Melbourne night. When it stops, one is dead.
In Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, a killing draws the police from empty streets into wealthy drawing rooms. The victim is Oliver Whyte, a recent arrival from England. Evidence points to Brian Fitzgerald, a young gentleman whose troubling silence puts his future with Madge Frettlby at risk.
Madge stands by her fiancé as the town turns against him. Mr. Calton, a calm, watchful barrister, doubts the police case and begins his own search. His inquiries lead beyond the polished Frettlby house into Melbourne’s poor lanes, where clues expose the distance between respectable appearances and carefully guarded lives.
What you’ll discover
- A city behind the fog Follow the investigation through grand houses, crowded back lanes, and the dark rooms of Melbourne.
- Silence under suspicion Watch Brian Fitzgerald face a murder charge while withholding an account of his own movements.
- Loyalty against public judgment Meet Madge Frettlby, who stands beside the man she loves when others turn away.
- Competing paths to truth Compare Gorby’s confident haste with Kilsip’s patient methods and Calton’s doubts about the evidence.
- The burden of old secrets Explore how old wrongs, promises, and shame press against the surface of respectable lives.
Who will love it
This book is for readers who enjoy a fair puzzle, a lively cast of eccentrics, courtroom scenes, and the streets of Victorian Melbourne.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A drunk passenger dies in a hansom cab
- Gorby follows a waistcoat to a name
- Love and rivalry in the Frettlby house
- Gorby shadows Brian and makes an arrest
- Calton fights for a client who will not talk
- The trial hangs on a missing witness
- A name from the past at Yabba Yallook
- Appearances deceive, from coats to clocks
- Secrets, loyalty and the price of a good name
- How Hume tells it with voice and humour
Who’s who
- Brian FitzgeraldA fair-haired Irish squatter, engaged to Madge Frettlby, who is arrested for murder and refuses to say where he was that night.
- Madge FrettlbyThe brave, clever daughter of a millionaire, who believes in Brian completely and sets out to prove his innocence herself.
- Mark FrettlbyA rich squatter whose luck is proverbial, devoted to his daughter and carrying a worry he will not share.
- Mr. GorbyA stout, smiling detective who talks to his mirror and wants to solve the hansom cab murder by careful reasoning.
- Duncan CaltonA witty, ambitious barrister who defends Brian and then keeps hunting for the true killer out of curiosity and friendship.
- Mr. KilsipA thin, soft-voiced detective who envies Gorby and follows a theory of his own about the case.
- Sal RawlinsA slum girl who can prove where Brian was that night, if anyone can find her.
- Mrs. SampsonBrian's talkative landlady, brittle as a cricket, whose stories and whose kitchen clock both matter more than she knows.
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Il mistero di una carrozza hansom
by Fergus Hume · 1886
A dead man in a Melbourne hansom cab, a light coat, a diamond ring: a detective hunts the killer.
Medium level5–10 hours to readItaliano
Excellent
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In short
A driver helps a drunk man into a hansom cab in Melbourne in the small hours. A stranger in a light coat rides beside him, then steps out on St. Kilda Road and walks away.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A drunk passenger dies in a hansom cab
The novel opens with a newspaper report. A hansom cab pulls up at the St. Kilda police station at twenty minutes to two in the morning. The driver, Malcolm Royston, announces that his passenger is dead.
Royston tells his story. A gentleman in a light coat held up a drunk man in evening dress near the Scotch Church. Then the drunk man's face came into the lamplight, the gentleman gasped a single word, and he walked away. A little later he came back, climbed into the cab and ordered the driver to St. Kilda. On St. Kilda Road he got out and said his friend would give directions at the Junction. There Royston finds the passenger lifeless, a handkerchief across his mouth marked O.W. in red.
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- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 15 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1886
- Language
- Italiano
- Reading time
- 6 h 30 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Hume, Fergus. The Mystery of a Hansom Cab. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-mystery-of-a-hansom-cab.
Hume, F. (2026). The mystery of a hansom cab. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-mystery-of-a-hansom-cab (Original work published 1886)
Hume, Fergus. The Mystery of a Hansom Cab. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-mystery-of-a-hansom-cab.
@book{hume2026mystery,
author = {Hume, Fergus},
title = {The Mystery of a Hansom Cab},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-mystery-of-a-hansom-cab},
note = {First published 1886}
}
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What is The Mystery of a Hansom Cab about?
It is about the murder of a drunk man in a hansom cab in Melbourne, and the search for the stranger in a light coat. A detective, a lawyer and a young woman each follow different clues.
Is The Mystery of a Hansom Cab a true story?
No. Fergus Hume says in his preface that the story is pure fiction from beginning to end. The Melbourne scenes draw on personal observation, and some characters are based on people Hume knew, though the crime is invented.
Who wrote The Mystery of a Hansom Cab and why?
Fergus Hume wrote it as his first novel, hoping to gain attention as a playwright. A bookseller told him that Gaboriau's French detective stories sold well, so he wrote a similar mystery set in Melbourne.
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.
More by Fergus Hume
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