The Curious Case of the Stolen Mace (el. knyga) (skaityta knyga) | knygos.lt

Aprašymas

The book that finally solves Australia's most infamous political crime. In 1891, the sacred symbol of the Victorian Parliament, its ceremonial mace, was stolen. A long, heavy club topped with a crown, it was popularly thought to be made of solid gold.

The colony's best detectives, a dour Scot named Tom Nixon and the famous Ned Kelly-hunter Mick Ward, were assigned to the case, but the mace was never recovered. No one was ever charged and a substantial reward remains unclaimed.

Was the thief a corrupt politician who took the mace to a brothel on a drunken lark? A parliamentary worker who was seen with an odd-shaped package? A carpenter who snuck in through an open window? Or a political activist?

Award-winning historian Sally Young pieces together old and new evidence 135 years later - including letters, witness statements and police reports - to reveal the thief and how he got away with the political crime of the century just as Melbourne was sinking into political and economic chaos caused by theft on a much grander scale.