Fergus Hume

He wanted the theatre. A bookseller told him crime would sell. Fergus Hume studied law in New Zealand, moved to Melbourne, and wrote The Mystery of a Hansom Cab after learning that readers wanted the detective stories of Émile Gaboriau. Publishers refused it, so he paid for the first edition himself. It sold; he sold the rights for fifty pounds; the book became an international success without making him rich. Hume moved to England in 1888 and kept writing—roughly 140 novels, most of them mysteries, across more than four decades. The first cab made his name. After it came a long procession of rooms, jewels, secrets, and bodies that would not stay unexplained.