Meny

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.

Further reading

Literary figure

Daniel Calder

Gender: Male

Like his colleague, Samuel Behrens, he is a friendly, elderly gentleman – and one of the most cold-blooded and skilful executioners working for the British counter intelligence service. The two are the main characters in a number of commended short stories – but no novels – by Michael Gilbert. They live in the same village in the county of Kent, and are bachelors, but Calder (who is an expert on w...

Further reading