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This project presents a comparative study that brings together two authors—Paco Ignacio Taibo II and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán—from two specific political contexts—post-1968 Mexico and post-Franco Spain—who both work in one specific genre—“noir” detective fiction. Although many scholars have addressed detective fiction in Latin America or Spain, the uniqueness of this project lies in its transatlantic study of “noir” detective fiction in Mexico and Spain by Paco Ignacio Taibo II and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. By analyzing the motives and means by which these writers adopt and adapt the North American hard-boiled model of detective fiction, this study presents a global picture of the political, social, economic and aesthetic processes that foment the creation of a “noir” poetic.
This dissertation addresses the emergence of the hard-boiled detective in Mexico and in Spain as an archetype that arises in specific social, historical, economic and political circumstances. These archetypes not only project a vision of a modern, urban society but also convey the lack of faith in the political, economic and social institutions inherent in the members of that society. Paco Ignacio Taibo II in Mexico and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán in Spain appropriate and adapt the established form of hard-boiled detective fiction known in Spanish as “novela negra.” They propel the sleuth through changing societies, specifically post-1968 Mexico and post-Franco Spain, struggling to reconcile a past of repression with the ideals of a democratic present. Both Taibo's detective, Hector Belascoarán Shayne and Vázquez Montalbán's detective, Pepe Carvalho simultaneously accept and resist the literary models set by such North American authors as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald. They embark, therefore, on a search for literary self-identity that coincides with their explorations of the identity of “modern” Mexico and Spain.