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

Milton Milodragovitch

Gender: Male

Like the author James Crumley’s other private detective, C.W. Sughrue, Milton ‘Milo’ Milodragovitch is a private detective in little Meriweather in Montana. He is an alcoholic, middle-aged war veteran, heavily into drugs, and he likes the ladies. Thanks to an inheritance, he can live with no cares, and make himself unpopular with the authorities. He does his detective work with one finger, but he...

Further reading