Evolution of Hispanic Crime Fiction in Fernanda Melchor's Hurricane Season and Paradais

Abstract

Exploiting Glen S. Close’s study (2008), this paper attempts to explicate the position Fernanda Melchor occupies on the Hispanic literary scene: how her novels Hurricane Season and Paradais fit in the packed ranks of Hispanic crime fiction, the novela negra; how they are beholden to their antecedents and the differences they have with said antecedents. Amply endowed with the grim workings of the novela negra, both novels are quite comparable with their contemporaries. In the long line of novela negra authors, Melchor is a rare female, delving into crime and showing it to the world through the eyes of a woman, highlighting the addictions, the violence, the corruption, the debauchery endemic in Mexican society and the misogyny underlying most of them. Locked in an incessant battle of survival, her characters are mirthless, helpless, and ruthless, breeding vicious and virulent violence against each other and themselves.