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

Toby (Tobias) Peters

Gender: Male

He is actually called Tobias Leon Pevsner, and has been a police officer, which his brother Phil still is. He is a restless and violent man who is eventually fired, after which his wife leaves him. He becomes a security guard but is fired again, and now ends up a tired private detective for stars in Hollywood. According to Stuart M. Kaminsky, Toby Peters is middle-aged and shabby – and he can’t fo...

Further reading