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
Abigail Bukula
Gender: Female
She was only 15 years old when her parents were murdered by apartheid supporters in South Africa. She, herself, was saved by a white soldier who later raped her. Now, Abigail Bukula is almost 40 years old, a successful lawyer in the Ministry of Law and married to newspaper owner Robert Momkapi, whom she however divorces. She is described by author Wessel Ebersohn as coloured, beautiful, smart...