In this article Jennifer Lewis argues that the detective novels of Paco Ignacio Taibo II adapt the conventions of the detective novel in order to examine and critique the idea of ‘Mexicanness’ in a post-colonial world.. She argues that these novels, with their unlikely (anti)hero, fantastic plots and playfully ironic style, respond in different ways to an array of different questions triggered by Mexico’s violent history: how to represent a city that is both “magical” and monstrous; how to respond both to the burden of history and a kind of cultural amnesia; how to imagine a kind of “Mexicanidad, Mexican-ness” that does not simply reproduce “exotic delusions”
