Investigating Society: The Cases of Pepe Carvalho and Tito Ihaka

Abstract

This article seeks to draw some parallels between two crime novels: Murder in the Central Committee (1981) by Spanish author Manuel Vázquez Montalbán and Old School Tie (a ka Dirty Laundry, 1994) by New Zealand author Paul Thomas. Despite their different background and the epochs in which they write, we will argue that these writers share some important features. First of all, they are both influenced by the hardboiled genre and therefore, they give accounts of modern, cosmopolitan societies (mainly Barcelona and Auckland), and both exploit political incorrectness. Second, their detectives have contempt for authority, speak their minds, are equally at ease amongst the bourgeoisie or the working class, and know their city extremely well. Finally, and most importantly, both series reflect a renegotiation of national identity in a multicultural context. In the case of Vázquez Montalbán, the focus is on the dialectic between national and regional, present and past, while with Thomas’s series the focus is on Māori and Pākehā. However, both writers defy mainstream interpretations of these dialectics as seen in crime fiction so far. They give a different perspective, going beyond simplistic contrapositions or polarizations. In so doing, they demand that readers go beyond stereotypes and analyze the question of cultural identity in all its complexity.