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

Mike Hammer

Gender: Male

One of the most severely criticised literary figures of all times is Michael ‘Mike’ Hammer – a cynical, vengeful army veteran who completely lacks any sense of humour, a communist-hater and private detective, who is the protagonist in a row of bestselling novels by Mickey Spillane. Hammer’s only weak point is his love for his secretary Velda. This figure is in part loosely based on a real-life Tex...

Further reading