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

Kenneth Carlisle

Gender: Male

A popular and charming silent-movie star who starts a new career when the talkies make their breakthrough – even though, in contrast to many colleagues, he has a good voice. But Kenneth Carlisle is fed up with show business, of the idolatry and of not having any private life, explains author Carolyn Wells. Instead, he establishes himself as a private detective in Manhattan, and solves cases in v...

Further reading