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

Max Darling

Gender: Male

He is well-off, handsome and is a good friend of the antiquarian bookseller Annie Laurance, the main character in a row of whodunnits by Carolyn Hart. When Annie is suspected of murder, he helps her, their friendship develops into love and results in a happy marriage. Darling, who has studied Law, starts his own firm as a ‘confidential agent’ – a sort of private detective without a licence.

Further reading