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.
Literary figure
Duncan Maclain
Gender: Male
He is young and rich, tall, dark and handsome with his curly hair. He also dresses very elegantly. Duncan Maclain lost his sight during the First World War, in which he took part with the rank of captain. It is, however, hard to believe – his other senses are extremely well developed. He is a well-known private detective in New York, where he marries the beautiful Sybylla Ford, according to a...