Policing Gender and Alicia Giménez Bartlett's Crime Fiction

Alicia Giménez Bartlett's popular crime series written in Spanish and organized around the exploits of Police Inspector Petra Delicado and Deputy Inspector Fermin Garzon is arguably the most successful detective series published in Spain during the previous three decades. Nina L. Molinaro examines the tensions between the rhetoric of gender differences espoused by the woman detective and the orthodox ideology of the police procedural. She argues that even as the series incorporates gender differences into the crime series formula it does so in order to correct women naturalize men's authority sanction social hierarchies and assuage collective anxieties. As Molinaro shows with the exception of the protagonist the women characters require constant surveillance and modification often as a result of men's supposedly intrinsic protectiveness or excessive sexuality. Men by contrast circulate more freely in the fictional world and are intrinsic to the political psychological and economic prosperity of their communities. Molinaro situates her discussion in Petra Delicado's contemporary Spain of dog owners ¡Hola! Russian cults and gated communities.