'Australians have always been welcoming to crime fiction (Knight, Continent of Mystery, ‘Origins and Sins’ 10–57). Bushranger ballads and squatter thrillers explored varied early wrongs, and rights; Victoria had two of the world’s first women crime writers, Ellen Davitt with Force and Fraud (1865) and Mary Fortune, whose many stories from 1866 often featured the detective skills of mounted trooper Mark Sinclair. Major authors Marcus Clarke and ‘Rolf Boldrewood’ published crime-related novels and Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886), set and first published in Melbourne, became London’s first best-selling crime novel.' (Introduction)