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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

Överkommissarie Hazlerigg

Gender: Male

Although Michael Gilbert wrote six novels and around 20 short stories about Hazlerigg, his first name is never mentioned. Very little at all is known about him, but he was born in Norfolk, started as a patrolling constable in London but was promoted and ended up in Scotland Yard. The good chief inspector is tall and heavily built, has a slightly red complexion, smokes a pipe and is not married – a...

Further reading