Female Corpses in Crime Fiction a Transatlantic Perspective Glen S
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Female Corpses in Crime Fiction A Transatlantic Perspective Glen S. Close General Editor: Clive Bloom Crime Files Series Editor Clive Bloom Professor Emeritus Middlesex University London, UK Since its invention in the nineteenth century, detective fiction has never been more popular. In novels, short stories and films, on the radio, on television and now in computer games, private detectives and psycho- paths, poisoners and overworked cops, tommy gun gangsters and cocaine criminals are the very stuff of modern imagination, and their creators a mainstay of popular consciousness. Crime Files is a ground-breaking series offering scholars, students and discerning readers a comprehensive set of guides to the world of crime and detective fiction. Every aspect of crime writing, from detective fiction to the gangster movie, true-crime exposé, police procedural and post-colonial investigation, is explored through clear and informative texts offering comprehensive coverage and theoreti- cal sophistication. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14927 Glen S. Close Female Corpses in Crime Fiction A Transatlantic Perspective Glen S. Close University of Wisconsin–Madison Madison, WI, USA Crime Files ISBN 978-3-319-99012-5 ISBN 978-3-319-99013-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99013-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018956150 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub- lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu- tional affiliations. Cover illustration: Arman Zhenikeyev / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland To Courtney ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My thinking about the issues explored in this book has been enriched by the labors of many scholars. I feel especially indebted to the work of Elisabeth Bronfen, whose influence here runs far deeper than my few quo- tations from her work might indicate. As a student of anatomical science and culture, I have also learned a great deal from Ludmilla Jordanova, Elizabeth Klaver, Katharine Park, Michael Sappol, Jonathan Sawday, Lindsay Steenberg and Elizabeth Stephens. My understanding of crime fiction has been strongly shaped, as my many references to their scholar- ship attest, by the pioneering work of Sarah Dunant, Lee Horsley, Joan Ramon Resina and David Trotter, among others. And as I have strayed into areas of cultural critique remote from my disciplinary training in Hispanic literatures, I have relied on the guidance of specialists including Jacque Lynn Foltyn, Deborah Jermyn, David P. Pierson and Sue Tait. To all the scholars I quote in the following pages, my sincere gratitude. Parts of this book have appeared previously in other volumes: Brigitte Adriaensen and Valeria Grinberg Pla, eds. Narrativas del crimen en América Latina. Formas de la violencia del policial a la narconovela (Lit Verlag 2012); Mónica Quijano and Héctor Fernando Vizcarra, eds. Crimen y ficción. Narrativa literaria y audiovisual sobre la violencia en América Latina (UNAM and Bonilla Artigas Editores 2015); and Brigitte Adriaensen and Marco Kunz, eds. Narcoficciones en México y Colombia (Iberoamericana Vervuert 2016). Thank you especially Brigitte, Marco and Mónica for your invitations to splendid conferences at the Université de Lausanne and the Universidad Autónoma Nacional de México, from which two of those volumes sprang, and to the publishers for permission vii viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS to reprint portions of my essays here. Thanks also to Rodrigo Pereyra and Jorge Zamora for their gracious invitation to the “Making of a Crime” conference at Texas Tech University, where I also presented an early ver- sion of this project. Support for this research was provided by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with funding from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. Throughout my career at the University of Wisconsin, I have enjoyed the unwavering support of my mentor Ksenija Bilbija, who provided valu- able feedback on the early versions of my manuscript. Hvala ti, moja ide- alna citateljko.̌ Finally, this book owes more to Courtney Lanz than to anyone else. Thank you, Courtney, for your tireless proofreading, your insights, your kindness and your courage. This is in honor of you. CONTENTS 1 Introduction 1 2 Necropornography in Modern Crime Fiction 35 3 The Hispanic Hard-Boiled 89 4 Femicide and Snuff 137 5 Conclusion 203 Works Cited 237 Index 257 ix LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1.1 Mickey Spillane, I, the Jury, New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1947 11 Fig. 1.2 Carter Brown, Slightly Dead, Sydney, Australia: Transport Publishing, 1953? 12 Fig. 1.3 Don Tracy, Look Down on Her Dying, New York: Pocket Books, 1968 13 Fig. 1.4 Alarma!, Mexico City, August 1985 25 Fig. 1.5 A. A. Fair [Erle Stanley Gardner], Turn on the Heat, New York: Dell Publishing, 1940 26 Fig. 2.1 Manhunt Detective Story Monthly, New York: St. John Publications/Flying Eagle, August 1955 64 Fig. 2.2 Ed McBain, So Nude, So Dead, London: Titan Books, 2015 65 Fig. 2.3 Carter Brown, The Corpse, New York: New American Library, 1958 67 Fig. 2.4 Day Keene, Dead in Bed, New York: Pyramid Books, 1959 68 Fig. 2.5 Aylwin Lee Martin, Death for a Hussy, Hasbrouck Heights, NJ: Graphic Publications, 1952 69 Fig. 2.6 Saucy Movie Tales, New York: Movie Digest Inc., February 1937 72 Fig. 2.7 Whit Harrison [Harry Whittington], Violent Night, New York: Phantom Books, 1952 73 Fig. 2.8 Jonathan Latimer, The Lady in the Morgue, New York, Pocket Books, 1958 75 Fig. 2.9 Michael Storme, Hot Dames on Cold Slabs, New York: Leisure Library, 1952 80 xi xii LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 3.1 Silver Kane [Francisco González Ledesma], Recuérdame al morir, Colección Servicio Secreto 360, Barcelona: Bruguera, 1957 91 Fig. 3.2 Jonathan Craig [Frank E. Smith], Un bello cadáver, Buenos Aires: Malinca, 1959 94 Fig. 3.3 Jorge Volpi, La paz de los sepulcros, México, D.F.: Seix Barral, 2007 127 Fig. 3.4 Roy Wilson [Eduardo Goligorsky], La morgue está de fiesta, Buenos Aires: Malinca, 1959 128 Fig. 4.1 Luis García Jambrina, Oposiciones a la morgue y otros ajustes de cuentas, Madrid: Valdemar, 1995 171 CHAPTER 1 Introduction This is a book about male fantasies of killing women and ogling their dead, naked bodies. When I was a boy in the 1970s, my parents sometimes let me watch television. One show that fired my tender imagination wasKolchak: The Night Stalker, first aired on the ABC network in the United States during the 1974–1975 season. This program, combining the detective formula with horror, was about a grizzled Chicago reporter who investigated bizarre crimes that turned out to be committed each week by a different supernatural monster: vampires one week, a werewolf the next, then a murderous doppelgänger ghost and so on. Since the narrow-minded police would never believe that monsters were responsible, Kolchak was left to vanquish them himself without ever quite managing to secure the proof that might redeem his reputation as a meddlesome crackpot. As I was completing this book, I had the occasion to watch Kolchak again for the first time in forty years, and I was startled to feel my weekly childhood fear instantly rekindled by a dark key change in Kolchak’s opening musical theme. From my professional perspective as a scholar of crime literature, however, I was also struck by the prominence of noir detective elements in what I had remembered as a monster show. The show’s central setting is a cluttered newspaper office located only yards from a noisy elevated train in downtown Chicago, and many of the suspense scenes take place in urban streets at night. The protagonist is a rumpled, cynical, wise-cracking loner with little use for women and no perceptible personal life beyond his job. His voiceover narration, often spoken into a handheld tape recorder, sum- © The Author(s) 2018 1 G. S. Close, Female Corpses in Crime Fiction, Crime Files, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99013-2_1 2 G. S. CLOSE marizes each week’s investigation in a matter-of-fact style inflected with notes of morbid emphasis and hard-boiled sarcasm. The generic identifica- tion was reinforced by the fact that the lead actor had made a name for himself playing the most famous of American hard-boiled detectives in an earlier television series called Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer. I mention this program here because I was also surprised by the content of its first episode, titled “The Ripper.” In it, the Chicago police unsuc- cessfully pursue an irresistibly powerful serial killer who turns out to be the original Jack the Ripper, visiting from London and still thriving nearly a century after his original crimes, for supernatural reasons the scriptwriters didn’t bother to explain.