Crime Writers

Photo: Geoffrey Swaine/REX/TT (2009)

Sample of authors

Brett, Simon

British author born in Worcester Park, Surrey. In 1949, the family moved to Ealing and a year later to Banstead where he attended Beacon School until 1956 when he won a grant to Dulwich College, London. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Wadham College, Oxford, in 1967. He was a member of the Oxford University Dramatic Society, and while at Oxford he spent all his leisure time performing...

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

Kommissarie Modeste Laviolette

Gender: Male

The somewhat misanthropic and contemplative Inspector Modeste Laviolette is working in Provence. He is overweight and he loves food and champagne. He has followed in his grandfather’s footsteps; his grandfather was chief of police. Laviolette is a bachelor and animal lover who lives with his housekeeper Chabassut and her 14 cats – he takes care of them after her death – in a string of novels by Pi...

Further reading