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

Roderick Alleyn

Gender: Male

His titled parents wanted him to become a diplomat; instead Roderick Alleyn chose to become a police officer and work for Scotland Yard. In more than 30 novels by Ngaio Marsh, he solves cases in a highly cultivated manner, often side-by-side with his wife, portrait-painter Agatha Troy. He is tall, dark and ‘stylish’ and is just as much at home in society as with the inhabitants of small country to...

Further reading