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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

John Appleby

Gender: Male

Detective inspector, later commissioner, at Scotland Yard, and so clever that he is eventually knighted by the queen. He is the main character in a row of novels and short stories by Michael Innes, and ages gracefully at the same pace as his creator. When he retires, Sir John Appleby buys a country estate. He is married to sculptress Judith Raven, and they have a son, Bobby, who himself acts the...

Further reading