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.
Literary figure
Francis Pettigrew
Gender: Male
As a young lawyer he was seen as a rising star, but bad luck and unexpected problems led to Francis Pettigrew never becoming more than a bitter, mediocre barrister. After solving several murder cases, sometimes together with Detective Inspector Mallett, and marrying Eleanor Brown (who was half his age), his fortune changes and he can grow old in satisfaction, reports Cyril Hare (pseudonym for...