Meny

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

Katrin Lindwall

Gender: Female

She is a central figure in three novels by K. Arne Blom about police unit EEV2229. The books were written in 1979-81, but they are set in a corrupt society in 1999. Detective Inspector Katrin Lindwall, 41 years old, has a narrow face with full lips and broad shoulders and has a page haircut. She is married to a politician, Ored, and has a son, Evert. She also suffers from breast cancer.

Further reading