The transplanted, inherently modern detective genre serves as an especially effective lens for exposing the fissures and divergences of modernity in post-1968 Mexico and revolutionary Cuba.

Combining in-depth critical analyses with the theoretical insights of current literary and cultural theory and Latin American postmodern studies, Crimes against the State, Crimes against Persons shows how the Cuban novela negra examines the Revolution through an incisive chronicle of life under a decaying regime, and how the Mexican neopoliciaco reveals the oppressive politics of modernization and globalization in Latin America.

International in scope, comparative in approach, Braham's study presents a unique inquiry into the ethical and aesthetic complexities that Latin American authors face in adapting genre detective fiction-a modern, metropolitan model-to radically diverse creative and ideological programs. Considering the work of writers such as Leonardo Padura Fuentes and Paco Ignacio Taibo II, as well as such English-language influences as G. K. Chesterton and Chester Himes, Braham also addresses Marxist critiques of the culture industry and emergent Latin American concepts of postmodernity.

Persephone Braham is assistant professor of Spanish at the University of Delaware.

How did it happen that whole regions of Latin America-Amazonia, Patagonia, the Caribbean-are named for monstrous races of women warriors, big-footed giants and cannibals? Through history, monsters inhabit human imaginings of discovery and creation, and also degeneration, chaos, and death. Latin America's most dynamic monsters can be traced to archetypes that are found in virtually all of the world's sacred traditions, but only in Latin America did Amazons, cannibals, zombies, and other monsters become enduring symbols of regional history, character, and identity. From Amazons to Zombies presents a comprehensive account of the qualities of monstrosity, the ways in which monsters function within and among cultures, and theories and genres of the monstrous. It describes the genesis and evolution of monsters in the construction and representation of Latin America from the Ancient world and early modern Iberia to the present.