Groundless Noir

Ontology and Latin American Crime Fiction

Erik Larson

2026
204 pages
$39.95
ISBN 9781684485901
Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory

This philosophical study of Latin American noir fiction poses the question, What if precarity and uncertainty aren't just themes of the genre but ways of being in the world? Emerging from a region immersed in violence, trauma, and political instability, the novela negra reveals not just disillusionment but a desire to adapt to, even dwell within, chaos. In the hands of writers like Ricardo Piglia, Roberto Bolaño, and Patricia Melo, savvy detectives and antiheroes navigate a world in which meaning constantly shifts and certainty is elusive. Blending literary analysis with philosophical inquiry, Larson draws on Heideggerian ontology to demonstrate how the noir novel becomes a mode of existence - grounded in its very groundlessness. Rather than offering resolution, these novels embody a paradoxical desire: to engage crisis while also adapting to it. In doing so, they become both ideological and pedagogical - existential fiction for an uncertain world.

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Reviews

"Groundless Noir offers an innovative and exhaustive analysis of Latin American crime fiction. In an eloquent conversation with Heidegger, Larson takes the pulse of the genre's multiple re-appropriations in the region. This lucid monograph reveals how the absence of an ontological ground - once a radical betrayal of the genre's horizon of expectations that subverted the Anglo-American canon - has gradually and paradoxically established a new precarious, yet subsisting foundation." - Fabricio Tocco, author of Precarious Secrets: A History of the Latin American Political Thriller

"According to Erik Larson, the contemporary Latin American novela negra features a detective who embraces the radical instability of the hard-boiled world as a new form of normality, skillfully navigating this ungrounded reality. In his book, Larson demonstrates the same mastery of this genre as the detective he describes." - Gerardo Pignatiello, author of El policial campero argentino (1845-2010)

About the author:

ERIK LARSON is an associate professor of Spanish at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, where he teaches courses on Latin American literature and culture. His research focuses on noir literature from Latin America at the intersection of philosophy and theory.

Distributed by Rutgers University Press

Cloth: $150, 9781684485918; Ebook: $39.95, 9781684485925