‘She had turned everything she touched into gold, and though it brought her no happiness, yet it was the cause of happiness to others.‘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.