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

Jonathan Wide

Gender: Male

Jonathan Wide has his roots in Småland, southern Sweden, and has been a detective with the Gothenburg police. He leaves his job, however, and becomes a private detective. In the background, there is a difficult divorce which has meant that he misses his children and drinks too much. Wide still has contact with his former colleagues, especially Sten Ard, with whom he cooperates in a couple of ...

Further reading