Antiheroes

In this book, Stavans uses his investigative and narrative talents to tackle the work of such internationally reputed figures as Carlos Fuentes, Paco Ignacio Taibo II, and Jorge Ibarguengoitia. He also explores the work of such lesser-known authors as Rafael Bernal and Rodolfo Usigli, and he contextualizes the whole tradition of Mexican thrillers by exploring the influential critical commentaries of scholars and journalists like Alfonso Reyes and Carlos Monsivais and by using as his foundational approach the views of Bakhtin. Stavans's overall argument is that, in a national arena where moral decadence and political corruption prevail, the detective genre has been forced to embrace the hard-boiled model of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, rather than exploring its links to the more high-brow, sophisticated British tradition of Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. An enlightening treatise on parody as a literary device, this book is a fiesta that students of Latin American literature in particular, and fans of the art of slighting in general, will not want to miss.