2009 Hard-Boiled for Hard Times in Leonardo Padura Fuentes’s Detective Fiction Hispania. 92.2 (2009): 234-43.

Abstract: Focusing on Leonardo Padura Fuentes\u27s hard-boiled fiction, this essay traces the origin and evolution of the genre in Cuba. Padura Fuentes has challenged the officially sanctioned socialist literatura policial became popular in the 1970s and 1980s, creating a new model of criticism that is not afraid to confront island\u27s socio-economic problems. This article analyzes how in this novelist\u27s tetralogy, the dominating rhetoric is one of scarcity, and how this constant state of lacking builds on the formulaic elements detective genre to reveal a social reality where crime (and its resolution) do not always have to do with discovery of a dead

2009 Hard-Boiled for Hard Times in Leonardo Padura Fuentes’s Detective Fiction Hispania. 92.2 (2009): 234-43.

Abstract: Focusing on Leonardo Padura Fuentes\u27s hard-boiled fiction, this essay traces the origin and evolution of the genre in Cuba. Padura Fuentes has challenged the officially sanctioned socialist literatura policial became popular in the 1970s and 1980s, creating a new model of criticism that is not afraid to confront island\u27s socio-economic problems. This article analyzes how in this novelist\u27s tetralogy, the dominating rhetoric is one of scarcity, and how this constant state of lacking builds on the formulaic elements detective genre to reveal a social reality where crime (and its resolution) do not always have to do with discovery of a dead