In 1886, three years before Sherlock Holmes debuted, Fergus Hume delivered this twisty, tongue-in-cheek mystery that proves truth can be stranger than any stage production. When melodramatist Cyrus Vance runs out of fuel at a remote shop, he expects a simple refill. Instead, he discovers the body of Anne Caldershaw, becomes trapped with her corpse, and watches helplessly as someone steals his car, leaving him the perfect suspect in her murder. Once he clears his name, Vance pursues the case less from civic duty than from fascination: the dead woman's rooms contain a photograph of a young woman he simply must meet. The missing glass eye may hold the key to the puzzle, but the real mystery is whether life can ever match the dramatic heights of a well-crafted melodrama. Hume writes with obvious delight in the genre's conventions, letting his protagonist apply theatrical logic to real stakes and finding dark humor in the gap between stage murder and the real thing.
