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
Annie Laurance (Darling)
Gender: Female
When she is suspected of murder, Annie Laurance – who runs a mystery book store in a fictional town in South Carolina – needs to prove her innocence. She continues to solve crime in a string of cosy whodunits by Carolyn Hart. She is assisted by her boyfriend, the private detective Max Darling, whom she marries in the fourth book and changes her surname to Darling.