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

Ed Hunter

Gender: Male

He was 18 years old when his alcoholic father was murdered, which led him to seek out his uncle Am – whose background included working as a private detective. The duo solves the case, and later found their own private detective agency. Edward ‘Ed’ Hunter (sometimes called Eddie) is good-looking, is ambitious and falls helplessly in love with the beautiful women he meets in a suite of highly comme...

Further reading