Review

Radical Noir: 26 Activist Crime Novels: Revolutionaries, Agitators, and Organizers in Crime Fiction

23 Shades of Black

Crime Reads
May 1st, 2018

Ken Wishnia’s Filomena Buscarsela series featuring a left-leaning Ecuadorian detective in New York City begins as procedural, but after his protagonist gets kicked off the force for calling out institutional corruption and injustice, this series just keeps getting more and more rad. The Buscarsela series is an extreme example of the disillusioned-police-officer-turned-private-detective-with-socialist-sympathies trope, and owes a debt to Hammett’s Red Harvest and other classic crime novels of conscience, while repurposing the trope for a feminist and international message. The series is rumored to be in development as a TV show, and it would be a pleasure to see Wishnia’s radical heroine kick some ass on-screen.

Back to Kenneth Wishnia’s Author Page