Crime Writers

Photo: Ray Fisher/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images (1977)

Sample of authors

MacDonald, John D.

The American author John Dann MacDonald was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania. His father (who was of Scottish ancestry) pursued a career at the Savage Arms Corporation. When he was offered a promotion in 1926, the family moved to Utica, New York, where his son attended high school, graduating as late as in 1932 on account of a bout of scarlet fever in 1928-29. During his illness, MacDonald read...

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

Porfiry Rostnikov

Gender: Male

He was a police officer during the Soviet era, and remained in the police force after the collapse of communism. According to author Stuart M. Kaminsky, he did so despite having problems with colleagues and superiors – because Porfiry Rostnikov is scrupulously honest and when necessary breaks bureaucratic rules. The fact that he is married to a Jewess, Sarah, is not seen with approval either. He r...

Further reading