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

Gideon Oliver

Gender: Male

Oliver is an anthropologist with an international reputation as the ‘Skeleton detective’. His speciality is skeleton research, and the police in several countries make use of his knowledge when it comes to determining the age and sex of a skeleton and the time of death. He is a bachelor in the first novels, but subsequently marries Julie Tendler, who becomes an important assistant to him in the bo...

Further reading