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

Zack Walker

Gender: Male

Science-fiction writer and journalist, and an over-protective and virtually paranoid family father. He does everything so that his wife, Susan, and their two children shall be safe and secure, but his creator Linwood Barclay lets him time after time become entangled in complicated murder mysteries in a farcical manner. Which means that Zack Walter must act the amateur detective so that his...

Further reading