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

Dolly Rawlins

Gender: Female

Her husband, Harry, was a successful leader for a gang of robbers, who according to the police were wiped out in a failed robbery. Dolly Rawlins, middle-aged, elegant, with sand-coloured hair and a lovely figure, took over his activities together with the other widows of the gang members. Together, they carry out successful robberies in books (and TV-series) by Lynda La Plante, but things don’t a...

Further reading