History of the Detective Novel

History of the Detective Novel Perhaps the first crime writer was Cicero. He was born Marcus Tullius Cicero in Arpinum, a small town on the outskirts of Rome on January 3, 106 BC. As a young man in Rome his skill as an orator had already begun to grow. He began to plead cases in the public forum in his 20s, becoming well known in a very short period of time. By the time he was in …

…the action of the private eye school. The trailblazers of this type of writing were J.J Marric, with his tales of Gideon of Scotland Yard and Ed McBain. This form of the detective novel was carried forth by the now common names of Ruth Rendel, writing of Inspector Wexford and Colin Dexter writing of the famous Inspector Morse. These sleuths were more human seeming than the often flat characters of the private eye novels.