Subverting Sex, Gender, and Genre in Cuban and Mexican Detective Fiction

The presence of bodies and sex in detective fiction has been a long-term feature of this internationally popular genre. Titillation is at the centre of narratives reliant upon discovery and revelation: motives and criminals are slowly revealed, along with sexualized and violated bodies – from femmes fatales to the corpses of victims. A satisfying, gratifying genre for its readership, the detective novel promises the disruption and subsequent restoration of order in societies tarnished by disillusionment which hope for a better future. This book takes as its focus examples of detective fiction from Cuba and Mexico during or in the aftermath of huge social upheaval (the Special Period and the War on Drugs), analyzing representations of sexualities, bodies, and the genre itself. Through an investigation of novels by Leonardo Padura and Amir Valle of Cuba, and Bef and Rogelio Guedea of Mexico, this work investigates increasingly fluid sexualities and bodies in challenging examples of metaphysical detective fiction, a particularly anxious subgenre which challenges both the structures and limits of the detective novel and the reader’s understanding of true and false and right and wrong, representative of troubling periods of severe social disruption for Cuba and Mexico.