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

Jack Butler

Gender: Male

Colonel John ‘Jack’ Butler has a high position in the secret British intelligence service. He has red hair (which is closely cropped), and is a conscientious and patriotic professional. He has three red-haired daughters, but his wife Madeleine Françoise de Latour d’Auray Butler vanished without trace and is presumed dead. Her husband is suspected of having killed her in one of Anthony Price’s spy...

Further reading