Detective Fiction, Political Fiction

Abstract

One of the most significant aspects of the evolution of detective fiction in Spain in the late twentieth century has been its transformation into a political genre, often used as an instrument of social observation and cultural criticism, as well as a space of political resistance and ideological subversion of the status quo by many Spanish writers, during and after the Franco regime. The noir thriller has tended to provide a destabilizing vision of crime in society, exposing the repressive aspects of punishment and social control, focusing on revealing the underlying political and social causes of crime. In recent years, particularly with the emergence of a number of women writers of detective novels and greater sensitivity towards non-heteronormative approaches, the detective genre also functions as a space of exploration, critique and subversión of the patriarchal values and hegemonic masculinity of the traditional models, as a new form of questioning gender/genre conventions.