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

William Dougal

Gender: Male

He is working on a doctoral thesis in History, but supports himself with various jobs in Andrew Taylor’s books about him: private detective, freelance editor, working in a security company etc. He is basically amoral, and spends just as much time committing crimes as he does solving them. William Dougal does, however, try to live honourably so that he can marry his girlfriend Celia Prentisse, w...

Further reading