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

Chris Norgren

Gender: Male

The friendly, correct and quiet Chris Norgren is a curator at the Seattle Art Museum, specialised in Baroque and Renaissance art. The tranquility of his work is, however, disturbed by art forgeries as well as murders – including that of his own boss who is found shot dead outside a whorehouse in Frankfurt. Author Aaron Elkins has been praised for his knowledge of art in the handful of books he h...

Further reading