Juan Anguera, alias Flanagan: Ironic Hard-boiled Hero

  • Louise Salstad North Carolina State University

Abstract

Juan Anguera, aka Flanagan, is the autodiagetic narrator of a best-selling series of adolescent novels by Catalan writers Andreu Martín and Jaume Ribera. Critics sometimes refer to the series as a parody of the novela negra, or hard-boiled detective novel, especially, though not exclusively, that of Raymond Chandler, whose private-eye hero, Philip Marlowe, is Flanagan's chief role model. The books certainly fall within the genre of the detective novel for adolescents, and they are definitely funny. But are they parodies, and if so, of what kind?

Author Biography

Louise Salstad, North Carolina State University
David Beagley is Lecturer in Children's Literature and Literacy at La Trobe University's Bendigo campus, Victoria, Australia, where he teaches units in Genres, History, Australian and Post-colonial children's literature. He has previously taught in secondary schools, and has been a school and university librarian.
Issue
Vol. 9 No. 1 (2005)
Section
Alice's Academy
Essays and articles published in The Looking Glass may be reproduced for non-profit use by any educational or public institution; letters to the editor and on-site comments made by our readers may not be used without the expressed permission of that individual. Any commercial use of this journal, in whole or in part, by any means, is prohibited. Authors of accepted articles assign to The Looking Glass the right to publish and distribute their text electronically and to archive and make it permanently available electronically. They retain the copyright and, 90 days after initial publication, may republish it in any form they wish as long as The Looking Glass is acknowledged as the original source.