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

Li Yan

Gender: Male

A young detective inspector in Beijing, China, who is always well dressed, polite (even when he is angry) and liked by women. A female police boss, Mei Ling, is in love with him, but Li Yan nevertheless starts a rather messy relationship with the internationally renowned American pathologist Margaret Campbell in six books and one long short story by Scottish author Peter May. Which results in...

Further reading