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.
Literary figure
Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen
Gender: Male
The internationally renowned scientist and genius is known as the “Thinking Machine”. Readers of mystery novels know him from the stories of Jacques Futrelle. Professor Van Dusen has an abnormally large head, little patience and is a stickler for facts. As a result, he is able to even break out of the high security Cell 13 …