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
Bunny (Harry) Manders
Gender: Male
At school, Harry (Bunny) Manders got to know A.J. Raffles, and as adults they became very good friends, E.W. Hornung tells us. To his amazement, Manders discovers that his friend is a clever master thief, and reluctantly agrees to help him – which ends up with Manders being forced to serve a prison sentence. He is otherwise a sensible, friendly and basically honest gentleman, a bachelor just l...