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

Norah Mulcahaney

Gender: Female

Young, attractive police officer in New York, who already in Lillian O’Donnell’s second book about her marries her older colleague Joe Capretto. After she has had several miscarriages, they adopt a child, but soon afterwards Norah Mulcahaney becomes a widow. She struggles on, however, and is promoted even though she breaks internal rules and in one instance even has her service weapon taken away.

Further reading