Vicente Rossi's Casos policiales, the English Model and the Search for the Authentic National Tradition: Persecution of the Jews and Defense of the Ruling Elite

Abstract

Vicente Rossi is a familiar name to the Hispanic literature scholars, despite the fact that there are almost no reviews about his literary works, and nobody has studied his detective stories. Although Borges noticed long time ago the injustice of literary history regarding this writer, and he foretold Rossi's glory, Borges's prognosis remains still denied by the silence that surrounds this author. A detailed examination of Casos policiales, the only compilation of his detective stories, is therefore still an outstanding debt. In this essay I examine this compilation, one of the most important books in the early history of the detective story genre in Argentina, and I try to demonstrate that the book can be seen as a turning point in the history of detective story in Argentina.