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

Steven Mitchell

Gender: Male

He is a ‘typical’ Scotland Yard chief inspector: of average height, with an everyday and friendly countenance, and he likes to wear a mackintosh and a bowler hat. He is also a thorough investigator who appreciates work discipline and routine work. He cooperates with amateur detectives, but it is often Steven Mitchell who arrives at the correct solutions in the books that Josephine Bell has wri...

Further reading