This paper considers Hamlet's unique use of sensationalised crime elements to problematise issues of detection in relation to justice in a corrupt society. Hamlet is not the only Shakespearean play to sensationalise crime, and indeed to simultaneously valorise it in relation to legitimacy, justice and morality - Macbeth and Measure for Measure readily spring to mind, as do earlier plays like Titus Andronicus and Richard III. But Hamlet's emphasis on the intrinsic difficulties of detection because of the individual nature of perception (and the consequent imperatives of scepticism and a developed mechanism for testing evidence) sets the play apart. Titus Andronicus and Richard III are more concerned with trickery and self-congratulatory political ambition than with the broader social effects of crime and its detection, and the disguised-duke plot in Measure for Measure, though it acknowledges some of the problems of detection, is by comparison a reductive device, since its primary effect is to reassure us about the duke's retention of power and the likelihood of a comic resolution. But the really crucial point of difference is Hamlet's relation to the revenge genre. Whereas the revenge elements in the plots of Richard III, Macbeth and Measure for Measure are comparatively minor, it is precisely the way in which Hamlet interrogates the Senecan conventions of the revenge genre that raises so centrally the issues of detection and social justice. It is salutary that modern crime fiction writers refer more frequently to Hamlet than to any other play of the period. The history of Elizabethan printing bears out the connection from a different perspective: there are informative correlations between the lists of Elizabethan printer-publishers, revenge plays and early works of crime fiction.