Someone else even turned it into a play & made money from that. He wrote The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, sold the copyright for £50 & never saw another penny of profit from the 750,000 copies sold during his lifetime. So, he asked a bookseller what kind of books sold well & he was told it was detective stories. He wanted to write plays but nobody would produce them. He was looking for adventure & a way to make a living. The author, Fergus Hume, was an Englishman who came out to Australia as many young men did in those days. The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is one of the most successful detective stories ever written. Many of the buildings of that period have survived & the city centre hasn't changed that much since 1886 when this book was written so I could visualise where the action was taking place. Melbourne was a boom town in the mid-ninetteenth century thanks to the Ballarat gold rush & was known as Marvellous Melbourne. That was one of the charms of this book for me, the references to Melbourne. I was sitting in a doctor's surgery (waiting for my sister who has had successful foot surgery) just around the corner from Powlett St as I read those words. So, I had to smile when I read that the main suspect in The Mystery of a Hansom Cab had been spotted being driven along Powlett St, East Melbourne. As someone who reads mostly English books I rarely come across a local reference.
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