Theme article
History of crime fiction
By: Johan Wopenka
Depending upon how one wishes to define the concept ‘crime fiction’, it is possible to trace its history and roots back in time. When Dorothy L. Sayers compiled her comprehensive three-volume anthology Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror (1928–34) she started with two stories from the Old Testament, and when Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee (alias Ellery Queen) wrote their fundamental The Detective Short Story : A Bibliography (1942), they listed eight Chinese collections of short stories which are believed to have been written down between 600 A.D. and 1800 A.D., some of them containing stories based on an older, oral tradition.
Literary figure
Yudel Gordon
Gender: Male
He is a prison psychologist and the main character in several of Wessel Ebersohn’s books. Yudel Gordon is of Jewish descent, a smallish middle-aged man with greying and always unkempt hair, and he wears glasses. He is married in a childless marriage to Rosa, who runs their household, but when necessary he can put his foot down. He is shy in the company of beautiful women, such as the coloured l...