Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: http://arrow.latrobe.edu.au/store/3/4/6/5/2/public/B26995177.pdf La Trobe University, Melbourne Australia _SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS_ _ON_ "The Carbuncle Clue." BY FERGUS HUME. UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME. =============== "Everywhere throughout its source there is evident the same wonderful originality that distinguished his first success. It is as clever a piece of detective story writing as 'The Leavenworth Case.'"--_Dundee Advertiser_. "To say that Mr. Fergus Home's 'The Carbuncle Clue' is one of his best stories hardly does justice to its merits. Very clever must be the reader who, in the earlier chapters, finds even a faint clue in this labyrinth of crime and intrigue."--_Morning Post_. "It is in all truth a mystery, and one which when dipped into will be followed with the greatest interest in all its maze of detail. There is scarcely one of the opening chapters that does not reveal some new, startling, and apparently inexplicable fact."--_The Scotsman_. "Among the more successful of the purveyors of the detective order of fiction is Mr. Fergus Hume. All who love mystery will find his last story exactly to their taste."--_Publishers' Circular_. "We were becoming afraid that Mr. Hume was over-producing--a fear greatly allayed by 'The Carbuncle Clue.' Mr. Hume keeps his story well in hand, and although the mystery changes its aspect many times, he never allows it to drag; and in the end he springs the secret on us in a way that effectually discounts any feeling of superiority we may have cherished as to our powers of playing the amateur detective."--_Literary World_. "Apart from the author's reputation, 'The Carbuncle Clue,' standing on its own undoubted merits, will commend itself to those of the reading public who can admire a clever plot, with just a sufficient dash of sensationalism. The skilful manner in which the plot is evolved and the machinations of the conspirators disclosed, place the work on a much higher level than the average detective story."--_Chester Courant_. "A capital story, one that will hold its reader enthralled to the end. The clever detective--Mr. Fanks, alias Rixton--is, we think greatly superior to Mr. Sherlock Holmes and his many followers, inasmuch as he is not omniscient, and is quite capable of making mistakes and getting exasperated over them. He follows the slender clue with the sagacity and patience of a bloodhound, and the mystery is so well maintained that its solution only breaks on us as we turn the last page.--_Pall Pall Gazette_.