Charming, intelligent and forthright, the remarkable Madame Midas makes her fortune on the goldfields of Ballarat—and becomes the target of the villainous ex-convict Gaston Vandeloup, a charismatic Frenchman who soon makes himself indispensable to her mining operations. A companion piece to The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, Fergus Hume’s second novel is both a tightly plotted murder mystery and an insight into the heady days of the Golden City and Marvellous Melbourne.