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

Perry (Peregrine) Trethowan

Gender: Male

He is from a wealthy, but eccentric, family, with which he has cut off contact. Now the slightly sardonic Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Peregrine ‘Perry’ Trethowan lives in London with his wife Jan and son Daniel. But when he investigates the murder of his father, he is forced to re-establish contact with the family, after which it plays a certain – and not particularly welcome – role in his life,...

Further reading