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
Alex McKnight
Gender: Male
When working as a policeman in Detroit he was shot and he still has a bullet in his body so he has to live a quiet life. He has inherited a holiday camp in the small town of Paradise in Michigan and sometimes reluctantly acts as a private detective in Steve Hamilton’s novels. Alex McKnight is of middle age, his hair is going grey and he lives alone. He is divorced, and his brief relationship w...