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

Jack Frost

Gender: Male

Middle-aged, chain-smoking bachelor Willian ’Jack’ Frost is a detective inspector in the fictive English town of Denton. He has a slovenly appearance, is careless and uses rather coarse language – but he is an excellent criminal investigator who grumpily solves complicated cases. His creator, R.D. Wingfield, only wrote six novels about him, but these have provided the basis for radio drama and sev...

Further reading