Roberto Ampuero and the Neruda Case: The detective, the poet, the ‘converso’

The Chilean novelist Roberto Ampuero (1951–) is best known for his Cayetano Brulé detective series and for his conspicuous ideological conversion from socialism to liberalism (or neoliberalism). The commonly accepted political dimension of the crime genre in Latin America, particularly in the post-dictatorship southern cone, is therefore somewhat problematic in Ampuero’s case. The 2008 novel, El caso Neruda [The Neruda Case], has an obvious political charge as it is set in the period leading up to the Augusto Pinochet coup of 1973. It is an origin story, going back to Cayetano’s first mission, when he is contracted by the great poet and Salvador Allende supporter, Pablo Neruda, to track down a Mexican doctor who may have a cure for the poet’s cancer (Neruda’s real wish is to track down the doctor’s wife, with whom he had an affair and who may have given birth to his daughter). The dying poet echoes the state of the nation. Moreover, his populist persona is subjected to critical scrutiny, while his treatment of others (especially women) is presented as complicating his cultural and political legacy. The figure of the down-to-earth private eye, meantime, is also far from straightforward. In the end, a universalist discourse and an underlying neoliberal anxiety risk neutralizing the potential social impact of the noir fiction genre.