Crime fiction writer

Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalises crimes, their detection, criminals, and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as historical fiction or science fiction, but the boundaries are indistinct. Crime fiction has multiple subgenres, including detective fiction (such as the whodunit), courtroom drama, hard-boiled fiction and legal thrillers. Most crime drama focus on crime investigation and does not feature the court room. Suspense and mystery are key elements that are nearly ubiquitous to the genre.

One of the earliest stories in which solving a crime is central to the story is Oedipus Rex, in which the search for the murderer of the previous king, leads to the downfall of the current one. Another early example of crime fiction is gong’ an fiction in China, which involved government magistrates who solved criminal court cases and first appeared in colloquial stories of the Song dynasty.

The earliest known modern crime fiction is Thomas Skinner Sturr's anonymous Richmond, or stories in the life of a Bow Street Officer (1827); the earliest full-length short-story in the genre is The Rector of Veilbye by the Danish author Steen Steensen Blicher, published in 1829.

Better known are the earlier dark works of Edgar Allan Poe. His brilliant and eccentric detective C. Auguste Dupin, a forerunner to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, appeared in works such as "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), "The Mystery of Marie Roget" (1842), and "The Purloined Letter" (1844). With his Dupin stories, Poe provided the framework for the classic detective story. The detective’s unnamed companion is the narrator of the stories and a prototype for the character of Dr. Watson in later Sherlock Holmes stories.

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