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.

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Literary figure

Christie (Christine) Opara

Gender: Female

Tough and quick-witted female police officer in New York, a widow after the death of a professional colleague. Christine ‘Christie’ Opara’s father is Greek, her mother Swedish and her husband had a Czech background: her surname should thus be pronounced Opper-uh. She is a 26-year-old slender blonde who lives on her own with her son Mickey.
Dorothy Uhnak wrote three novels about her, and she beca...

Further reading