ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the crime novel which was the real sensation of 1887, Fergus Hume's The Mystery of a Hansom Cab. Given that much of the argument relating to the novel's relationship with sensation fiction depends on details of the plot. In order to read The Mystery of a Hansom Cab as a reinvention, even a parody, of the sensation novel, it will be necessary first to define such generic terms. Another context for sensation fiction, which The Mystery of a Hansom Cab appropriates in its very title, was the increased speed of life. Certainly, sensation novels such as The Moonstone, which appeared between the second and third Contagious Diseases Acts, satirised the moralistic and repressive turn that social purity would eventually take following Josephine Butler's successful repeal campaign. Sensation narratives were seen as a contagion, spreading from class to class and acting on the body in ways suspiciously close to those of pornography.
