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

Syster Pelagia

Gender: Female

Around the year 1900 – according to author Boris Akunin (pseudonym för Grigory Chkhartishvili) – the nun, Sister Pelagia lived in a nunnery in the little Russian town of Zavolzhsk. She wore spectacles, was a bit clumsy and despite her red hair and her freckles it was easy to ignore her. But she was very intelligent and attentive, and solved some tricky crime cases to the great satisfaction of Bish...

Further reading