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

Jonas Mørck

Gender: Male

When the reader first gets to meet him, he is a detective sergeant with the Danish Rejsehold – a sort of Danish FBI – but he gets older in the books by Danish author Poul Ørum, and eventually retires, although he still continues to be involved in murder investigations. Jonas Mørck is a dutiful and conscientious police officer, and after the death of his wife he has a deep understanding for peopl...

Further reading