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

Henri Castang

Gender: Male

An experienced police officer, working in a nameless French city (which is reminiscent of Strasbourg), but also in places such as Brussels. Henri Castang is a thoughtful, eccentric detective who primarily searches for motives when he investigates a murder case. He is married to Vera, a Slovakian gymnast who was badly injured in a training exercise, and who has an important subsidiary role in...

Further reading