Fergus Hume

The Disappearing Eye (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Motoring about the countryside in search of inspiration, melodramatist Cyrus Vance runs out of gas at the door of a remote shop. Having filled his tank, he searches for the proprietor, only to discover her dead, himself locked in, and someone driving away with his car. Once he has convinced the excited townsfolk who release him of his innocence, Vance is inclined to pursue the mystery, if only because he has become enraptured by the photo of a young woman in the murdered woman's rooms and vows to meet and woo her.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Blackmore Dennett
• Erscheinungstermin: 18. Dezember 2018
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9788829578436
• Artikelnr.: 54780143

Autorenporträt

Fergusson Wright Hume (1859 - 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'." After the success of his first novel and the publication of another, Professor Brankel's Secret (c.?1886), Hume returned to England in 1888. His third novel was titled Madame Midas and it was based on the life of the mine and newspaper owner Alice Ann Cornwell. This book became a play and her estranged husband, John Whiteman, sued over its content. Hume resided in London for a few years and then moved to the Essex countryside where he lived in Thundersley for 30 years. Eventually he produced more than 100 novels and short stories.