History of Crime Novels

Edgar Allan Poe
The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) Short Story featuring Monsieur C Auguste  Dupin
Three other Dupin stories follow in the 1840s

Wilkie Collins
The Woman in White (1859) and The Moonstone (1868) are novels which involve crime and police but are not crime novels as we know them now.

First women Crime writers:
Seeley Regester
Anna Katherine Green - Neither has any great success.

Charles Dickens
Inspector Bucket in Bleak House

Arthur Conan Doyle (a medical practitioner from Edinburgh) invents Sherlock Holmes.
First novel - A Study in Scarlet published 1887.
The Sign of Four (1889)
The Hound of The Baskervilles published in 1902
Final story The Valley of Fear published in 1914
Holmes becomes famous for his deductive powers – as Hercule Poirot will later. The novels also set the template for the bumbling sidekick in this case Dr Watson, but later examples include Captain Hastings (Poirot), Sgt. Lewis (Morse) and Tinker(Sexton Blake). This character was often, indeed usually, used to make the central character appear even more clever by being stupid themselves, and to allow events to be explained simply for the reader’s benefit.

1886 Fergus Hume:
The Mystery of a Hansom Cab - sold 350,000 copies in uk by 1900, by which time it had been translated into 12 languages

1893 Sexton Blake:
created by Hal Meredith. Nearly 200 authors wrote Sexton Blake stories over the next sixty years inc Edgar Wallace and John Creasey.

E.W. Hornung:
Raffles aristocratic burglar cum hero appears for the first time in 1899 in “The Amateur Cracksman”

Baroness Orczy:
Hungarian born baroness who came to England for her education, created the Scarlet Pimpernel.

G.K. Chesterton:
Norfolk born author – first Father brown novel published in 1911 (“The Innocence of Father Brown”)

Gaston Le Roux:
best known for Phantom of the Opera – wrote the first “locked room mystery”

1913 - Trent’s Last Case:
only crime novel from E.C. Bentley inventor of “Clerihews”

Dashiell Hammett
joins Pinkertons Detective Agency (1914) - gains the experience he used for The Continental Op and Sam Spade novels

1915
The first appearance of Richard Hannay in “The Thirty Nine Steps” by Baron Tweedsmuir aka John Buchan.

1920: Agatha Christie’s first novel
The Mysterious Affair at Styles – introduces retired Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (of Little Grey Cells fame). She had gained her knowledge of poisons by working in a Torquay dispensary during the First World War.

1920: Freeman Willis Crofts
The Cask: Features French detective George Le Touche. Effectively the first “police procedural”. Crofts (an Irishman) does not continue with Le Touche because of Poirot’s success. He creates Scotland Yard detective Inspector Joseph French to replace him.  

1932
John Creasey’s first novel – Department Z. He goes on to become the most prolific crime writer of all. When he died in 1979, he had written nearly 600 crime novels under 28 pseudonyms, the most well known of which were JJ Marric Commander (Gideon of The Yard), Anthony Morton (The Baron novels) and Gordon Ashe (over 30 Patrick Dawlish stories), not to mention his own name (Inspector West). He became the first Chairman of the Crime Writer’s association when it was formed in 1953.

1933
First Perry Mason novel (The Case of the Velvet Claws). Erle Stanley Gardner goes on to become one of the most prolific of American novelists. Perry Mason was famously portrayed by Raymond Burr in a long running TV series.

1934
Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie’s best known novel, thanks to the film of the same name with Peter Ustinov as Poirot.

This period was dominated by the big names from the Golden Era, who consistently published high quality novels.

The most important new thriller/crime writer to emerge during this time was Ian Fleming (Casino Royale – 1954). He was not really a crime writer, nor was Alistair MacLean (HMS Ulysses 1955). Both were thriller writers whose novels often included a crime.

Ed McBain published his first 87th Precinct novel (Cop Hater) in 1956.

In Britain the only standout novel was Josephine Tey’s The Daughters of Time (1951).

In addition the Crime Writers Association was formed in 1953, with John Creasey as it’s first chairman.

The first winner of their Gold Dagger was Winston Graham (best known for his historical Poldark novels ) for his crime novel  “Little Walls” (1955).

These five authors will play a huge part in the ever growing popularity of crime fiction over the next forty years.

They are joined in the next few years by Catherine Aird, Reginald Hill, Peter Lovesey, Elmore Leonard,  Margaret Yorke and Frederick Forsyth, James Lee Burke, George Pelecanos.

1975 An important year
Last appearance of Hercule Poirot in Curtain – written in the 1940s but intended to be published after Agatha Christie’s death – which actually followed a year later. Judging from the first Poirot novel in 1920, he would be about 120 by now!!

The first appearance of a grouchy Oxford detective named Morse with his soon to be a grandfather sidekick Lewis in Colin Dexter’s “Last Bus to Woodstock”

Simon Brett introduces his thespian sleuth, Charles Paris, in “Cast in Order of Disappearance”

1976 The final Miss Marple novel – Sleeping Murder (also written in the 1940s) is published.

Death of Agatha Christie

1977 The first Brother Cadfael novel by Ellis Peters – though she had been writing for 20 years (A Morbid Taste for Bones)

First appearance of Lovejoy (The Judas Pair) by Jonathan Gash.

The last 20 years have seen a proliferation of crime novels, and huge crime sections in every public library in the country. Go to our crime section and you can find 20 authors who have entered the genre since 1980 without even trying.

The biggest name at the moment is probably the Scotsman Ian Rankin, who published his first Rebus novel in 1988, and now brings out one a year. The big names from the sixties, Ruth Rendell and PD James are still going, and Dick Francis only stopped when his wife died two years ago.

Our standing order fiction list includes about 200 crime authors and they feature in every bookshop.

Television has featured many literary detectives, many of them brilliantly portrayed. eg John Thaw as Morse, Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes and David Suchet as Poirot, not to mention Raymond Burr as Perry Mason.

There are more types of crime novel than ever before, and you can find on our shelves cosy country murders, police procedurals, serial killers, forensic scientists, supernatural crime, private eyes, amateur detectives, crime novels set in Italy, Egypt, Australia, America, Africa, Sweden etc etc. For every Morse there is a Cordelia Grey, for every Phillip Marlowe a Stephanie Plum.

Then you can find historical crime, future crime, realism, futurism, pacifism (no not really), and one day a crime writer will win The Booker Prize. But that may be asking just too much.....