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
Bertie
Gender: Male
Bertie was the popular name for Albert Edward who was the son of Queen Victoria and between 1901 and 1910 King Edward VII. As a young Prince of Wales he was a notorious playboy who caused many scandals to the despair of his mother. He solves crime in a handful historical whodunits by Peter Lovesey.