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

Dagobert Trostler

Gender: Male

A rich, and in posh circles highly regarded amateur criminologist and music-lover in the Vienna of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, often called Detective Dagobert in the short stories that author Balduin Groller (pseudonym for Adalbert Goldscheider) wrote about him. Dagobert Trostler is a trim middle-aged bon viveur and bachelor with a dark beard and hair (although thin on top), glowing dark eyes...

Further reading