Crime Writers

Photo: Peter Peitsch (1996) / www.peitschphoto.com

Sample of authors

Deitmer, Sabine

The German author of crime novels Sabine Deitmar was born in Jena, Thüringen, and grew up in Düsseldorf. Deitmer became interested in crime fiction at an early age, and wrote her literature MA thesis on the work of Agatha Christie. After working as a teacher and translator in the UK, southern Germany and Berlin, she moved to the Ruhr district in the 1970s where she became a high school teacher. D...

Further reading

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 figures

Lise Delorme

Gender: Female

She is young and beautiful and she is a skilful police officer. When Lise Delorme is sent to work in Algonquin Bay in Ontario in Canada, it is not only to work on cases of violent crime, but also – in secret – to investigate a suspected network of bribery in the local police force. She succeeds, and starts to work with Detective John Cardinal in Giles Blunt’s novels. And a fragile relationship slo...

Further reading