Chaos and Madness

In the 1950s prolific U.S. fiction writer Stephen Marlowe became a cult author for lovers of noir fiction mainly for his Drumbeat series, which present his best-known character: private eye Chester Drum. Yet, the academia never paid much attention to his multifaceted, extensive oeuvre. Chaos and Madness is the first volume offering a critical approach to Marlowe’s riveting historical novels. Their relevance in the field of literary studies derives from their well-wrought structure and captivating prose as well as from their portrayal of remote European history – a distinctive feature that makes Marlowe a unique figure in the North American trend of historiographic metafiction.
Chaos and Madness provides a comprehensive narratological and ideological analysis of three novels in which Marlowe deals with Spanish history. Preceded by an in-depth if reader-friendly theoretical chapter that traces the evolution of the historical novel as a genre, Calvo-Pascual’s meticulous investigation into Marlowe’s fiction proves compelling for anyone interested in contemporary American fiction, in Spanish history, or in the interaction of metafiction and the scientific discourse of chaos theory.

Chaos and Madness has been awarded the Javier Coy Biennial Research Awards 2013 for best monograph.
The goal of these awards is to promote high-quality scholarship in the field of American Studies, and to celebrate the originality and excellence of research carried out within SAAS.

"Chaos and Madness is theoretically engaged. The author has an admirable ability to explain abstruse concepts in simple terms. Her analysis is sophisticated, yet clear and fluently written. As a rule, Calvo-Pascual works with precise definitions, leading readers interested in the complex world of Stephen Marlowe by the hand." – in: Miscelánea: a Journal of English and American Studies 44 (2011), pp. 151-156