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
Emmy Tibbett
Gender: Female
She is the wife of the English detective Henry Tibbett in a suite of whodunnits by Patricia Moyes. Emmy Tibbett was born in the Netherlands, and is a plump lady who hides stubbornness and will-power behind a jolly and friendly façade. She struggles hard to keep her weight down, and shares in her husband’s cases with empathy and curiosity. Quite often it is she who discovers decisive leads.