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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.

Further reading

Literary figure

John Mallett

Gender: Male

It is not clear whether he really is called John: but author Cyril Hare (pseudonym for Gordon Clark) has privately indicated that such is the case. Mallett is a detective inspector at Scotland Yard. He is a widower, tall and well-built, with a mild-red face. He sees lunch as the most important event of the day, but nevertheless manages to solve a number of troublesome murder cases, more often...

Further reading