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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 figure

Rene Shade

Gender: Male

According to author Daniel Woodrell, the fictive small town St. Bruno in Florida is riddled with corruption and filled with crime and misery. The Shade family live there, and several members are engaged is shady deals. Not, however, the middle brother Rene Shade – an ex-boxer, scarred and wide-shouldered with dark skin and blue eyes, and just as ruthlessly tough as the worst elements in town. He o...

Further reading