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

John J. Malone

Gender: Male

He is a lawyer in Chicago, always longing for a drink, willing ladies and rich clients. John Joseph Malone is a slovenly, sweaty and red-faced little man, always wearing a creased suit. But he is a clever and unconventional detective in the entertaining novels by Craig Rice (pseudonym for Georgiana Randolph Craig), in which he usually has the married couple Jake and Helene Justus by his side.

Further reading