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

Tabor Süden

Gender: Male

For eleven years, Chief Inspector Süden led the section in the police department in Munich that looks for missing people. But he tired of that, resigned and moved to Cologne where he worked as a waiter, according to his creator Friedrich Ani. After several years, Süden returned, however, to his home city, and became a private detective. He is renowned for his silence – he doesn’t ask many quest...

Further reading