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

Harriet Martens

Gender: Female

Not without reason, she is called ‘The Hard Detective’, and Chief Inspector Harriet Martens in Greater Birchester is tough. She needs to be: she has to sort our various problems in her own police force as well as struggling against uncomprehending superiors. But her creator H.R.F. Keating lets her have a happy private life with her husband John – at any rate until their adult twin sons are the vic...

Further reading