ABSTRACT
With her first detective novel, Black, black, black, Marta Sanz (Madrid, 1967–) joins a growing group of authors who, since 2001, have addressed issues surrounding contemporary immigration to Spain within the well-established generic codes of crime fiction. 1 The novelas negras, dedicated to the phenomenon, range from the classic hardboiled and police procedural varieties to more experimental subgenres that engage the postmodern and postcolonial conceptions of truth and identity. As shall be seen, Sanz’s Black, black, black (2010) operates as a metaphysical detective novel as Patricia Merivale and Susan Elizabeth Sweeney have defined it; that is, the text functions with hermeneutic skepticism that subverts traditional conventions and asks questions about mysteries of “being” and “knowing” that transcend the mystery plot (2). In this antidetective novel, unlike its Spanish predecessors, immigrants are not placed front and center in order to address narrowly their respective victimization or guilt in terms of the crime being investigated. Instead, concerns over immigration and integration are interwoven with the questioning of broader economic issues including globalization and disparity of wealth, free trade and real estate bubbles, as well as social questions relating to gay rights, divorce, custody rights, (statutory) rape, religious plurality, and elder abuse. The novel is divided into three parts, each referring to one of the “blacks” in its title: “Black I” is narrated by the private investigator, Arturo Zarco; “Black II” is told by the neighbor, Luz, and includes portions from her fictional journal; and “Black III” is narrated by Paula, Zarco’s ex-wife and investigating sidekick. 2 Each of the text’s narrators is acutely aware of the intra- and intertextuality with which their stories function and of the prejudicial power that Western cultural references can have over perception and knowledge of self and other. In this way, Black, black, black is not only a novel that depicts immigrant characters’ difficulties as they resist acculturation and confront xenophobia in one of Madrid’s central, middle-class neighborhoods, it is also a text that is grounded in the postmodern tenet that any ultimate truth is not attainable and begs its readers to question the ways and degrees by which our understanding of ethics and justice are predetermined by our cultural mores.
