Monday, November 14, 2011

All I Want for Christmas... (3)

All I Want for Christmas Is.... is a feature/meme sponsored by Danya at A Tapestry of Words. It is where we choose a book each week leading up to Christmas and say why it's made it onto our wishlists. And Danya would love to see what books everyone else is hoping to get, so make your post and link up at Danya's site.

My choice this week was apparently a little hard for Santa to find last year (at least in hard copy--which is what I want, no e-books for me). So we're going put it on the list again and see if Santa's magic can find a copy for this Christmas....I have long wanted to get my hands on Fergus Hume's 1893 mystery story The Mystery of a Hansom Cab. It's been on my list of gotta-haves almost as long as I've liked mysteries (and that's a long time!). Here's the synopsis: On the twenty-seventh day of July at the hour of twenty minutes to two o'clock in the morning a hansom cab drove up to the police station in Grey Street St. Kilda and the driver made the startling statement that his cab contained the body of a man who he had reason to believe had been murdered.

2 comments:

danya said...

Oh, I hope you get it this year! Totally understand what you mean about having a physical copy, I'm not big on e-books either.

Yvette said...

This sounds like the plot of Ngaio Marsh's DEATH IN A WHITE TIE, in which a body is found in the back of a cab. The cabdriver having just pulled up in front of a police station.

So, take away the hansom cab and replace with motor vehicle cab and you have quite a coincidence.

Dashiell Hammett says:

"The best detective story I have ever read."

Maybe you can read DEATH IN WHITE TIE and it might be as good. :)