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Portrait image of Carl-Johan Vallgren Photo: Ola Erikson / Forflex (2024)

Sample of authors

Vallgren, Carl-Johan

Carl-Johan Emanuel Vallgren has never been sure about whether he should focus on music or on writing. He studied music and his primary goal was to become a musician. Vallgren was born in Linköping in and grew up at Skogstorp near Falkenberg. His mother was a childminder who later trained as a preschool teacher. His father was managing director of a small factory. Vallgren was an introvert child, ...

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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.

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Literary figures

Tom Ripley

Gender: Male

He is charming, handsome and cultivated as well as being a ruthless serial killer and psychopath totally lacking in empathy, the main character in five classic thrillers by Patricia Highsmith. Thomas ‘Tom’ Ripley became an orphan when he was five years old, and was brought up by a callous female relative. He later marries the wealthy Héloïse Plisson, but nevertheless has successfully continued his...

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