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

Max Carrados

Gender: Male

He was born as Max Wynn, and become blind after an accident. A relative let him inherit a fortune on condition that he adopted the surname Carrados. He is tall and handsome, but unmarried, and he solves criminal cases as a hobby. Max Wynn Carrados’ other senses are extremely acute; he can, for example, read the paper with his finger tops, author Ernest Bramah (an alias for Ernest Smith) claims.

Further reading