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A review by melbsreads
The Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume
4.0
Trigger warnings: murder, death, alcohol abuse.
22/6/2018
I love this book. It's full of great characters. The setting is wonderful (me, biased? Whaaaaat??). The mystery is engaging and kept me guessing, even on reread. And on reread, I noticed just how much humour is in the story, and how many iconically Melbourne things are present in it, even 130+ years later. There's a sentence fairly early on about how it's a really hot day and how it should be a December day but the "clerk of the weather" got confused and dumped it into August by accident and that is SUCH a Melbourne experience and I loved it.
Plus, this book basically changed crime fiction forever, and was a worldwide smash. So...yeah.
27/9/2013
For something that was written around 120 years ago, this was incredibly readable. I loved the story - it was full of twists and turns and misdirection, and it paints a brilliant picture of 1880s Melbourne. I think at least part of my enjoyment was due to the fact that I knew all the places Hume mentions in detail, so I could get a mental picture of Brian hailing a hansom cab outside Scot's Church, of the cab making its way down St. Kilda Road, of strolls through the Treasury Gardens, and trips through the seedy underbelly off Little Bourke.
I think what I enjoyed most were his character portrayals, particularly for the supporting characters. Not so much the "He was tall and blond and had a moustache" kind of descriptions, but the parts that made them human - the squeaky singing voices and nasal laughs and crackling joints. It added humour and depth to a story that could otherwise have been a fairly standard whodunnit.
22/6/2018
I love this book. It's full of great characters. The setting is wonderful (me, biased? Whaaaaat??). The mystery is engaging and kept me guessing, even on reread. And on reread, I noticed just how much humour is in the story, and how many iconically Melbourne things are present in it, even 130+ years later. There's a sentence fairly early on about how it's a really hot day and how it should be a December day but the "clerk of the weather" got confused and dumped it into August by accident and that is SUCH a Melbourne experience and I loved it.
Plus, this book basically changed crime fiction forever, and was a worldwide smash. So...yeah.
27/9/2013
For something that was written around 120 years ago, this was incredibly readable. I loved the story - it was full of twists and turns and misdirection, and it paints a brilliant picture of 1880s Melbourne. I think at least part of my enjoyment was due to the fact that I knew all the places Hume mentions in detail, so I could get a mental picture of Brian hailing a hansom cab outside Scot's Church, of the cab making its way down St. Kilda Road, of strolls through the Treasury Gardens, and trips through the seedy underbelly off Little Bourke.
I think what I enjoyed most were his character portrayals, particularly for the supporting characters. Not so much the "He was tall and blond and had a moustache" kind of descriptions, but the parts that made them human - the squeaky singing voices and nasal laughs and crackling joints. It added humour and depth to a story that could otherwise have been a fairly standard whodunnit.