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

Joshua Clunk

Gender: Male

He is a lawyer and one of the more unsympathetic problem solvers in crime fiction. He is a greedy hypocrite and uses dubious juridical tricks to have his clients found ‘not guilty’. He likes best to be at home with his only wife, whom author H.C.Bailey variously calls Maria, Rachel and Emma. But when he wants to be, Joshua Clunk is also a skilful detective who manages to prove the innocence of sev...

Further reading