Perpetrator’s Lineage (pequeñas mujeres rojas by Marta Sanz, Noir Novel of Historical Memory)

Abstract

pequeñas mujeres rojas by Marta Sanz is a historical memory novel engaged with the construction of the Spanish democratic memory. It focuses on the figure of the perpetrator Jesús Beato (an informer) and his relatives. Beato’s motivation is greed. Their descendants inherit the assets gained from the crime as well as the greedy and criminal condition. As a novel of memory, it takes part of the perpetrator’s turn of cultural representations and it seeks a clear and univocal relationship with the past, with the exhumations of graves and their historical significance. The literary features of the crime novel give centrality to the corpus delicti, the lacerated corpse of Paula Quiñones, which becomes a testimony to the perpetuation of violence within the recent Spanish history (1936-2012). As a hypotext, this crime novel has some horror films and tales. Horror is the way of representing evil and correcting the banality of evil.