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
Lancelot Priestley
Gender: Male
He was forced to resign from the university where he taught Chemistry and Physics after skirmishes with the board. But he is well-off, and his hobby is to help English police officers solve tricky murder mysteries – usually by just listening to their reports in the books by John Rhode (pseudonym for Cecil Street). Dr. Lancelot Priestley has thick spectacles, is a widower and has a daughter named A...