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.

Further reading

Literary figure

José da Silva

Gender: Male

He is tall and dark, with a thin, sun-tanned face which is distinguished by a well-trimmed moustache. He comes from a ‘fine’ family, which has not prevented him from getting a job with the police force, where José da Silva – called Zé by his friends – is promoted to police captain in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. He is a smoker, doesn’t like flying and successfully solves cases in a suite of novels by...

Further reading