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

Ephraim Peck

Gender: Male

The very friendly and honest retired judge Ephraim Peabody Peck lives in the fictive Sac Prairie in Wisconsin. He usually wears a large overcoat and a wide-rimmed hat and carries an umbrella. He can look slightly confused and lost, but one shouldn’t be fooled by his appearance, author August Derleth assures us. Peck has helped the police to solve many strange murder cases.

Further reading