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
Tromp Kramer
Gender: Male
In the very first books, he is a brusque, prejudiced gentleman for whom one can feel little sympathy, but author James McClure lets him gradually develop to the better. Tromp ‘Trompie’ Kramer is a large man and white and is employed by the crime squad of the police department in the fictive town of Trekkersburg in South Africa. He lives with the widow Fourie, and works together with his Zulu ser...