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
Mr. Moto
Gender: Male
He introduces himself as I.A. Moto, but that is certainly not his name: he is a secret agent of the Japanese emperor, and is called only Mr. Moto. He is a highly educated, aristocratic judo master, is small and with a "typically Japanese" appearance. He rarely investigates cases, but helps others (mainly Americans) solve them, according to American author John P. Marquand.