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

Mordecai Tremaine

Gender: Male

His full name is the grandiose Mordecai Euripides Tremaine, but he himself is a warm-hearted, retired tobacconist and amateur criminologist in London who spends his time reading romantic novels and solving crimes. He stumbles across murders or is drawn into cases by his good friend Jonathan Boyce of Scotland Yard. Francis Duncan (pseudonym for William Underhill) has written five novels about him.

Further reading