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
Quincy Durant
Gender: Male
As a young boy, he met ‘Artie’ Wu in a children’s home, and when they were in their early teens, they ran away together from this. Now they run the company WuDu Ltd. (speciality: frauds and dangerous missions). Quincy Durant is very tall, very thin, rarely gets his hair cut and is always nervous. His skin has a slightly brown tint to it, which makes him look as if he always has a suntan, accor...