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

Luke Pagan

Gender: Male

He was a quiet, somewhat naïve but ambitious police officer in England when the First World War started and he was transferred to a newly-created intelligence department thanks to his knowledge of languages. During the war, Luke Pagan – together with the jolly Joe Narrabone who doesn’t hesitate to make use of ‘unorthodox’ methods – struggles against spies and other enemies in three historical nove...

Further reading