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.
Literary figure
Joseph Rouletabille
Gender: Male
He is 18 years old when he solves an ‘impossible crime’ in Gaston Leroux’s classic first detective story. He is actually called Joseph Joséphine, and his father is a master criminal. Joseph Rouletabille is a journalist, but also an amateur detective and even a secret agent in one novel. He is small in stature, but quick-witted and energetic. His marriage with the beautiful Ivana Vilitchkov has an...