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

Rex Carver

Gender: Male

He isn’t considered to be good enough for the secret service, but when he opened his own detective agency they engaged him anyway – for a fee. He took on the job: Rex Carver adores money just as much as he does women. He has an office in London, where his secretary Hilda Wilkins sits, but he himself is often out and about. With him, Victor Canning created an original hybrid of a secret agent and h...

Further reading