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

Margaret Campbell

Gender: Female

American forensic pathologist, whose background includes a messy private life, but who is known internationally in her profession. Margaret Campbell thus often cooperates with the police, for example in China, where she meets the young detective inspector Li Yan. They get on well professionally, and despite private disagreements they have a son, Li Jon, who grows up with his mother in the USA,...

Further reading