Crime Writers

Photo: Simone Padovani/Awakening/Getty Images (2017)

Sample of authors

Kutscher, Volker

The German author Volker Kutscher was born in Lindlar and grew up in Wipperfürth near Köln (Cologne). He studied Germanic Languages, Philosophy and History in Köln and Wupperthal. Parallel with his work as a journalist, in the 1990s he started to write detective stories, at first together with another author, Christian Schnalke. Kutscher is now a full-time writer and lives in Köln.
The first nov...

Further reading

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 figures

David Small

Gender: Male

He is a rabbi in a conservative Jewish congregation in Barnard’s Crossing, a Boston suburb. David Small, created by Harry Kemelman, is a short man with an ordinary appearance and who often wears creased clothes. He is married to Miriam and has two sons, Jonathan and Hepsibah. He is also an original amateur detective who bases his logical reasoning on the religious writings of the Talmud.

Further reading