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.
Literary figure
Cliff Hardy
Gender: Male
Hard-boiled private detective in Sydney. Cliff Hardy was born in a poor working-class family, dropped out of his university studies and was an investigator for an insurance company before opening his own detective agency. Despite the fact that he usually dresses in shabby jeans and a leather jacket, he has many wealthy clients. He is a big man and in good condition, with coarse black hair and a...