Madame Midas

This work is a fictionalized true crime based loosely on a real-life female Australian mining speculator of the late 19th Century, Alice Cornwell. When the sophisticated French prisoner Gaston Vandeloup flees to the goldfields of Ballarat, he meets the remarkable Madame Midas, who has made her fortune in Ballarat's incredible mines industry. But her wealth makes her prey to a series of awful events. A gripping plot that moves at the right pace and makes you want to know what's next. It is a melodrama full of twists and turns at the height of its fame with false identities, mysteries, humiliation, fainting men, women, and more. Madame Midas is the second novel by British lawyer and author Fergusson Wright Hume. It is the exhilarating companion piece to Fergus Hume's phenomenally successful The Mystery of a Hansom Cab. Hume writes about a time in Victoria that was key in developing their current lifestyle. He provides some intriguing glances into both the problems and the luxuries of early days of white settlement.