The article presents a sociological analysis of violence representations based on the study of crime fiction. Relying on the Frankfurtian comments on the booming of crime fiction in the modernity, two European writers (Andrea Camilleri and Henning Mankell) are compared with a Latin American one (Roberto Bola–o). Bola–o's novel, 2666, is built on a particular kind of social violence related to both impunity and the State incompetence or, ultimately, to the non-feasibility of the Modern Project. Such reality creates room for a kind of representation that strays from the canons of crime fiction, as it will be noticed in the characterization of the detective. Inquiring into the violent challenges to the flimsy social order, this new kind of Latin American detective fiction calls into question the representations of death, that is, the representation of what cannot be represented.
Representations of violence; Noir fiction; Roberto Bola–o; Literature and violence