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This book investigates the development of crime fiction in the 1880s and 1890s, challenging studies of late-Victorian crime fiction which have given undue prominence to a handful of key figures and have offered an over-simplified analytical framework, thereby overlooking the generic, moral, and formal complexities of the nascent genre.

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Introduction 1. ´Ordinary Secret Sinners´: Robert Louis Stevenson´s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). 2. ´The most popular book of modern times´: Fergus Hume´s The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886). 3. ´L´homme c´est rien - l´oeuvre c´est tout´: the Sherlock Holmes stories and work. 4. Something for ´the silly season´: Policing and the Press in Israel Zangwill´s The Big Bow Mystery (1891). 5. Tales of ´mean streets´: the criminal-detective in Arthur Morrison´s The Dorrington Deed-Box (1897). 6. A Criminal in Disguise´: class and empire in Guy Boothby´s A Prince of Swindlers (1897). Conclusion Works Cited Index

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´This rigorous and passionate book will make you want to sprint to Project Gutenberg in search of the texts, as well as give you a keen appreciation of just why Victorian magazine editors vied to find the next Arthur Conan Doyle.´ - Times Higher Education

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Clare Clarke is Assistant Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. She specialises in detective fiction and the literature and culture of the late-Victorian era. Her research has been published in CLUES, Women´s Writing, and Victorian Literature and Culture.

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