Crime Writers

Photo: Central Press/Hulton Archive via Getty Images (1956)

Sample of authors

Gilbert, Michael

Michael Francis Gilbert was a British author of mystery stories and thrillers. He was born in Billinghay, Lincolnshire, and educated at St. Peter’s School in Seaford, Sussex, and Blundell’s School, Tiverton, Devon, after which he read law at the University of London, graduating in 1937. During the war he served in North Africa and Europe. He was a prisoner of war in North Africa and based his thr...

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

Anastasia Kamenskaja

Gender: Female

The young, later middle-aged, Anastasia Kamenskaya is an analyst and investigator for the Moscow Police Department. She is linguistically gifted and beautiful, but is careless about her appearance and how she dresses. Her kind live-in partner (later her husband) looks after their home and accepts that she is often too tired for sex. She is also the main character in a long suite of novels by...

Further reading