Laura Esquivel and Reyes Calderón’s Inaugural Detective Novels: Transatlantic Hispanic Femicrime

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Laura Esquivel’s 2014 novel A Lupita le gustaba planchar is that author’s as yet sole foray into detective fiction. While the work demonstrates certain parallels to the novela negra, both the author and main character are female, and the plot more closely resembles that of a fast-paced thriller. This work shows substantial similarities in style, tone, plot, and language with the important Spanish novelist Reyes Calderón’s inaugural detective novel Las lágrimas de Hemingway (2005). This essay, then, is a comparative examination of those two works in a transatlantic gender/genre study of two femicrime narrativeswhich show the increasing prominence of women’s voices, reasoning abilities, and transformative powers within two traditionally patriarchal Hispanic societies.