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

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...

Further reading