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

John Putnam Thatcher

Gender: Male

As the senior vice president for the third largest bank in the world – and in effect the man who runs the bank’s business – John Putnam Thatcher is an international power factor. He is also a clever amateur detective who solves many of the crimes he comes across in his work. He is a dignified, very polite gentleman in his sixties, according to his creator Emma Lathen (pseudonym for Mary J. Latsi...

Further reading