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Portrait image of Richard Lockridge

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Lockridge, Richard

An American journalist and author, born in St. Joseph, Missouri, where he also grew up. After finishing school, he studied at Kansas City Junior College as well as the University of Missouri in Columbia. He curtailed his studies when he was conscripted for military service in 1918, and when – after a short time – he had finished that, he had various jobs such as a shop assistant and a fairground w...

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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.

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Literary figures

Harriet Vane

Gender: Female

At the age of 29, crime writer Harriet Vane stands trial accused of having poisoned her lover. She is shown to be innocent by Lord Peter Wimsey, who falls in love with her and then in some of Dorothy L. Sayers’ novels courts the independent Vane. She participates in his investigations, but is not interested in a more intimate relationship with him. Eventually, however, she gives in, they get m...

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