Crime Scenes : Latin American Crime Fiction from the 1960s to the 2010s

This book identifies and interrogates some of the principal developments in contemporary Latin American crime fiction. Covering Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela, the authors investigate how the crime scene critiques issues such as injustice, discrimination, neoliberalism, violence, identity, corruption, and memory.

Crime fiction has become a key element in Latin American literature. The rise in production of the genre can be explained by an urgency to explore issues of morality in societies which incorporate varying levels of censorship and corruption. Through a focus on the concept of the crime scene itself, this book identifies and interrogates some of the principal developments in contemporary Latin American crime fiction. In ten chapters which cover Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela, and generic diversity which spans police procedurals, narcoliteratura, postmodern detection, and historical portrayals of crimes, the authors investigate how the crime scene – which has always been central to the genre and its subgenres – critiques local and global issues, including social injustice, discrimination, neoliberalism, violence, identity, corruption, and memory.