Crime Writers

Photo: Rosdiana Ciaravolo/Getty Images (2019)

Sample of authors

MacBride, Stuart

Stuart MacBride is a Scottish author of crime fiction. He was born in Dumbarton near Glasgow and grew up in Aberdeen where he attended Middlefield Academy and Westhill Academy. He went on to study architecture at Herriot Watt University, Edinburgh without graduating. He has worked with scrubbing toilets on an oil rig and he was a graphic designer, actor, undertaker and computer programmer before...

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

Twinks (Honoria) Lyminster

Gender: Female

Judging from author Simon Brett’s description of Lady Honoria ‘Twinks’ Lyminster, she is one of the most beautiful amateur detectives in crime fiction. She has white-blonde hair, a perfect figure – slim, but she is nevertheless physically strong – a resounding voice and a provocative laugh. All men immediately fall in love with her which allows her to solve a number of farcical cases that are set...

Further reading