Sam Saunders Social Subversion and Monarchic Mistrust: The Use of Mesmerism in The Notting Hill Mystery Sam Saunders is an MRes student at Liverpool John Moores University, studying female characters and their various depictions in archetypal character-roles in Victorian detective fiction. He completed his undergraduate degree at Bangor University, where his third year dissertation explored the evolution of the use of medievalism as social commentary in literature over the nineteenth and twentieth century. His general research interests lie in nineteenth century-crime, detective and sensation fiction, the Victorian novel and print culture. The Notting Hill Mystery, called ‘the first detective novel’ 1 and authored by the pseudonymous Charles Felix, was originally published between 1862 and 1863 as an eight-part serial in the magazine Once a Week. It remains relatively obscure in the face of more recognisable crime-fiction works, such as those by Wilkie Collins and (later) Arthur Conan Doyle, however due to recent republication from The British Library, awareness of its importance as a precursor to the modern detective story has begun to circulate. 2 The text itself is presented in an extraordinary and irregular format; as a collection of letters, reports, interviews, diary entries and even a map of a crime scene. This collection of documents is arranged by the would-be ‘detective’ figure of Ralph Henderson, an insurance investigator who is attempting to determine whether a life-insurance policy should be paid to one of the novel’s primary antagonistic characters, the sinister, silent character of Baron R**. The novel unapologetically plays with numerous popular Victorian social issues, including the concept of social class, antiquated notions of monarchism, middle-class institutions (specifically law, inheritance and marriage), death and perhaps most notably the distinction between science and supernaturalism. These elements combine to portray a complex tale of subversion against middle class values that contemporary readers would have accepted as irrefutable. The Baron is suspected of murdering his wife, Madame R**, who (gruesomely) drinks acid whilst apparently sleepwalking. A little investigation reveals two more apparent murders; the Baron’s sister- in-law and her husband (Mr. and Mrs. Anderton). Mrs. Anderton is in fact Madame R**’s long-lost twin sister, and they have an apparent ‘mesmeric link’ that the Baron exploits in order to cause both sisters’ illnesses and deaths. These three deaths suspiciously place the Baron in line for a £50,000 payment; a combination of £25,000 worth of inheritance, and £25,000 worth of life insurance that the he himself has taken out on his wife. Henderson, whilst suspecting the Baron of foul-play on the part 1 Symons, J., Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel, London: Faber and Faber (1972), p. 51 2 Flood, A., ‘First Ever Detective Novel Back in Print After 150 Years’, in Guardian, online resource available at http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/feb/21/first-detective-novel-notting-hill-mystery , accessed 13 April 2015 (2012)