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

Bulldog (Hugh) Drummond [1]

Gender: Male

With his hero, the English writer Sapper (pseudonym for H.C. McNeile) created one of the most criticized figures in crime fiction. Hugh ‘Bulldog’ Drummond is a rich war veteran and adventurer, terribly good at everything from shooting to poker. He is also a conservative arch-nationalist with racist as well as fascist ideas. He surrounds himself with a crowd of jolly friends and his wife Phyllis Be...

Further reading