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.
Literary figure
Simon Templar
Gender: Male
Little is known about his background, but already when he was only 19 years old, Englishman Simon Templar started be called The Saint probably on account of his initials. He is an adventurer and thief who is described as a modern Robin Hood (which in some respects is debatable) but he also features as a detective and, for example, combats organised crime in several of Leslie Charteris’ many s...