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The Piccadilly Puzzle A Mysterious Story
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The Piccadilly Puzzle A Mysterious Story
Current price: $8.10
Barnes and Noble
The Piccadilly Puzzle A Mysterious Story
Current price: $8.10
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Size: Paperback
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Fergusson Wright Hume (8 July 1859 - 12 July 1932), known as Fergus Hume, was a prolific English novelist. Finding that the novels of Émile Gaboriau were then very popular in Melbourne, Hume obtained and read a set of them and determined to write a novel of the same kind. The result was The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, set in Melbourne, with descriptions of poor urban life based on his knowledge of Little Bourke Street. It was self-published in 1886 and became a great success. Because he sold the British and American rights for 50 pounds, however, he reaped little of the potential financial benefit. It became the best-selling mystery novel of the Victorian era; in 1990 John Sutherland called it the most sensationally popular crime and detective novel of the century. This novel inspired Arthur Conan Doyle to write A Study in Scarlet, which introduced the fictional consulting detective Sherlock Holmes. Doyle remarked, Hansom Cab was a slight tale, mostly sold by puffing.