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
Melita Pargeter
Gender: Female
Mrs Melita Pargeter refuses to accept that her deceased husband was the man he was: a smart thief and fraudster. He left her a fortune and a promise from his gang to help her. She is, says author Simon Brett, a friendly, white-haired elderly lady, whose ample appearance hides a will of steel, great stubbornness and a sharp tongue – which makes her a formidable amateur detective.