Alberto Edwards and his conservative detective Román Calvo

Abstract

Chilean lawyer, politician, historian, essay and short story writer Alberto Edwards (1847-1932) introduced in 1914 the character of the witty, daring and avenging private detective Roman Calvo, the hero of seventeen detective short stories. Convinced of the moral decadence of his country —manifested, in his view, in the loss of respect for tradition, authority and social hierarchies— Edwards created in Roman Calvo a detective who embodies his aristocratic-conservative and scientific-empiricist spirit: a true Chilean counterpart to SherlockHolmes. Using for the most part the same method Of investigation, Roman Calvo outdoes Sherlock Holmes on mo occasions on Spanish American soil while the latter remains unsurpassable in England. In this way, Edwards follows and refines the classical Angloamerican detective genre, introduces Chilean cultural traits, and produces thereby a predominantly hybrid assimilation of the narrative subgenre of the detective story.