Crime Writers

Photo: Bengt Gustafsson / Forflex

Sample of authors

Pamuk, Orhan

Turkish author, born and grew up in Istanbul, Nisantasi, in an affluent middle-class family. The father was a civil engineer, as was Orhan’s grandfather, who laid the foundations for the family’s fortune. After graduating from school – the secular American Robert College – Pamuk studied Architecture and Journalism. Until he was 22, he devoted himself to painting and dreamt of becoming an artist. T...

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

Dickson McCunn

Gender: Male

The author John Buchan’s most original detective is the retired grocer Dickson McCunn, a 60+ man with a romantic heart and a commercially inclined brain. He is withdrawn and his appearance is rather nondescript, and when he becomes involved in criminal cases he surprises his friends as well as his enemies with his resolute actions.

Further reading