Petra Delicado: A Hard-Boiled Police Investigator

• Published in: South Central Review 2010-04, Vol.27 (1/2), p.91-104
• Main Author: Oxford, Jeffrey
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Criminal investigation; Criminal investigations; Detective fiction; Law enforcement agencies; Literary criticism; Mysteries; Narratives; Novels; Police; Postfeminism; Private investigation; Protagonists; Social criticism & satire; Society; Violence
• ISSN: 0743-6831; 1549-3377; 1549-3377; 0038-321X
• DOI: 10.1353/scr.0.0072

Petra Delicado, the female, hard-boiled detective and police inspector made famous by the Spanish writer Alicia Giménez Bartlett, views her professional role as one of breaking "the glass ceiling"—both for herself and her suspects—and she will use whatever means, physical or otherwise, both to discover the true perpetrator of the crime and obtain a confession from that individual. Her ability to move in the world of the criminals and corrupt government officials—including the police force itself—reveals that the patriarchal, machista society of traditional Spain has certainly changed since the death of Franco and that women are now not solely relegated to the work of the hearth. It is my contention that Alicia Giménez Bartlett crosses the heretofore critical chasm between the violence-laden, bad-mouthing hard boiled genre and the law and order-abiding/promoting police procedural. That is, Alicia Giménez Bartlett leads the reader on a narrative journey in which the long-held dichotomy between the police procedural and the hard boiled is, in fact, beginning to fade if not be outright erased, and a detailed examination of the eight novels shows that Petra Delicado embodies a new type of hard-boiled detective on the force in Spanish literature. She may be a police officer, but she is hard boiled both in spirit and action.