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

Hafez el-Assad

Gender: Male

He is simply called Assad by his colleagues in the crime novels by Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen. Despite lacking formal qualifications, he is employed in the police department’s so-called ‘cold-case’ group. He generously shares of his knowledge of, for example, various types of weapons, but is not keen to talk about himself. Assad has his roots in an Arab country, probably Syria, and has certa...

Further reading