Crime Scene: LUCY SUSSEX Blockbuster!: Fergus Hume and The Mystery of the Hansom Cab. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm

Tags: Arthur Conan Doyle/ detective fiction/ Fergus Hume/ Lucy Sussex/ Mary Braddon/ Wilkie Collins

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, written in the mid 1880s, was a world-wide publishing phenomenon. The story of its publication deserves a book like Blockbuster!.

Lucy Sussex is a renowned crime fiction expert, researcher and editor, originally from New Zealand, now from Melbourne. This is worth noting, as Fergus Hume’s life journey took him from his place of birth in England, to New Zealand, then Melbourne and ultimately back to Europe. Blockbuster! is an intriguing undertaking, not a literary biography as such, or a word by word analysis of The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, or any other of the many other works Hume left behind. Rather, it’s a combination of all of the above. As Sussex puts it:

… Hume was a private person, leaving no diaries nor even many surviving letters. The approach here is by nature impressionistic. But it tells a story, a bibliographic mystery, one in which life intertwines with the subject matter of crime almost inextricably.

Taking a genealogical approach, Sussex builds a picture of Hume’s family background and early life, with some side explorations of the etymology of the word ‘detective’, as well as the sort of society that existed around the time Hume was growing up.

But it is the coincidences and minutiae of life revealed by the English census records from the time that reveal some of the most interesting sidelines. In the 1861 census: ‘Here are listed two small boys of Celtic heritage (Irish and Scot), both born in 1859: Arthur Conan Doyle on 22 May and Ferguson Wright Hume on 8 July.’

These two lives went on to follow literary idols like Wilkie Collins and Mary Braddon in developing and popularising ‘detective fiction’. The background details Sussex sets out give an interesting picture of the times and instantly put to bed any notion that six degrees of separation is a modern concept.

Hume’s childhood was spent in and around a series of lunatic asylums where his father worked originally as an attendant, eventually rising into management after the family emigrated to New Zealand. In a most unexpected manner, the development of a love of, and talent for, the arts was fostered in the Hume children within the walls of their father’s workplaces. While Hume discovered a love of words and performance, other family members came to be talented singers and musicians (two of his sisters had the potential to become world-renowned opera singers, their careers eventually blighted by injury and illness). The background of the entire family once they reach New Zealand is reasonably well-documented and there is much to be discovered about Fergus Hume’s formative years, which provide glimpses into the man he would become – particularly in matters sartorial:

… we would have seen a darkhaired man, not tall, tending to the stocky. Most noticeable would be his dandy styling: a bowler or wide-awake hat on his head, moustache curled with wax, high stiff collar above a starched shirt, diamond studs (paste), a well-tailored jacket and waistcoat, buttoned gloves, tight trousers, and patent leather boots. If he could get one, a gardenia buttonhole was ‘indispensable’.

Hume had style, panache and ambition, although this was very much slanted towards becoming a famous dramatist more than a novelist. The Mystery of a Hansom Cab owes its very existence to a plan to increase the writer’s profile with theatre producers and owners. After emigrating from New Zealand to Melbourne and working as a barrister’s clerk, Hume’s desire for a change of career dictated the determination and speed with which the book was researched and written.

The story of the writer pales somewhat beside the story of the life of the novel itself. The writing of the book is covered and, as interesting as that is, and the connections that it continues to have with present-day Melbourne, what’s of particular note is how one book became a publishing sensation – firstly in Australia, and then on throughout Europe:

Everybody did everything right … from the author who researched his market and plotted his whodunnit carefully, to the publisher who packaged an attractive product and marketed it with real brilliance. As a result, Hansom Cab became a fad, the book everybody had to read, commodity capitalism at work.

The writing of Hansom Cab, the research behind it, the selection of the genre, all of these elements are carefully laid out for the reader to follow. But where things become fascinating is in the packaging, marketing and selling of this book. This is where a blockbuster surely was created.

From timing the release to match the habits of the book-buying public perfectly, to advertising stunts that were clever, evocative and atmospheric, everything about the lead-up to the release of the book cleverly built a sense of anticipation – even to the overt and very manipulative ‘resupply’ trips to the major bookselling stores, designed to create a sense of panic that readers might risk missing out on the latest sensation. The way the book was initially marketed and sold is stunning.

To give this campaign context, Sussex has meticulously researched and explained the manner in which books were sold, and the ‘players’ at the time – describing the entrepreneurs who established book emporiums the like of which a book addict these days would give an arm and a leg to see:

All, however, was not rosy for Hume himself, with cads, crooks, and rip-off merchants as far as the eye could see vying for their piece of the Hansom Cab story. While the book itself created a money-making empire, it did not serve Hume so well – either in his stated aim of becoming an acknowledged dramatist, or in providing him with financial means equivalent to the sales success. He persisted with writing, though, eventually returning to England to live, where yet more interesting connections emerge between him and the literary establishment. He died a slightly sad and subdued figure in 1932.

Sussex is very clear about just how important The Mystery of a Hansom Cab was in terms of developing detective fiction into a market leader:

Above all, the work consolidated detective fiction as a publishing genre, one with a mass readership of avid fans. Vizetelly with Gaboriau, Anna Katherine Green and others had shown that the market existed for tales of crime, but it took the blockbusting success of Hansom Cab, achieved by Trischler’s brilliant marketing, to prove how lucrative crime fiction could be. Publishers took note and, over a century later, detective fiction is still a market leader.

Lucy Sussex Blockbuster!: Fergus Hume and The Mystery of a Hansom Cab Text 2015 PB 336pp $32.99

Karen Chisholm blogs from http://www.austcrimefiction.org, where she posts book reviews well as author biographies.

You can buy this book from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW here or you can buy it from Booktopia here.

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