First published in 1908, The Green Mummy begins with a romantic bargain and quickly turns a museum acquisition into a murder case. Artist Archie Hope has paid Professor Braddock one thousand pounds for permission to marry Braddock's stepdaughter Lucy. The money finances the purchase of an Incan mummy, but the packing case delivered to Braddock's house contains the strangled body of his assistant Sidney Bolton instead. That reversal gives the novel its best hook and establishes the two linked questions: who killed Bolton, and where did the mummy go?
Fergus Hume builds the investigation through competing claims rather than a single detective's orderly reasoning. Braddock wants the specimen, Don Pedro de Gayangos claims it was stolen from his family, Captain Hervey has a hidden connection to the original theft, and Sir Frank Random is framed with a manuscript taken from the mummy. Archie is the nearest thing to a central investigator, but the truth emerges through confrontations, letters, a dying accusation, and Mrs. Jasher's written confession.
The book is energetic and often entertaining, although its repetition and sensational coincidences make it looser than a modern procedural. Braddock's grotesque selfishness supplies dark comedy until his greed becomes plainly criminal. The period language and portrayals of Indigenous and non-English characters are frequently offensive, so modern readers should approach the novel as a historically important but deeply dated example of popular mystery fiction.
