Susana Hernández Marcet (Barcelona, 1969) is a Spanish writer who specializes in noir fiction. She created the character of Inspector Rebeca Santana, a lesbian investigator, who is the protagonist of several novels. Hernández has also written theatrical plays and taught literary workshops.
Hernández studied image and sound and social integration, as well as private investigation and psychology. In addition to collaborating with print and radio media outlets, she has excelled as a writer. In 2005, she won the Ciudad de Sant Adrià award and was a finalist in the 2013 Valencia Negra literary festival. Inspector Santana was chosen as the best female character in noir and detective fiction in the 2012 LeeMisterio awards.
Along with writers Clara Asunción García and Isabel Franc, Hernández was a pioneer in creating criminal or detective plots around lesbian characters. All these novelists show an influence by US author Jean M. Redmann.
Eva Paris-Huesca, in Curvas peligrosas en el contexto de los feminismos del nuevo milenio (2013) quotes Professor Shelley Godsland when she explains that this vast body of female-authored literature developed in Spain from the 1980s onwards, establishing a dialogue with the various feminist movements that have been gradually developing alongside the progress made by Spanish women in the political, economic, and social spheres.
Moreover, gender studies researcher Alicia Romero López compares Hernández's Inspector Santana character with other female detectives created by authors such as Alicia Giménez Bartlett (with her character ), Blanca Álvarez González (with Bárbara Villalta), Isabel Franc (with Emma García), (with Cornelia Weber-Tejedor), Rosa Montero (with Bruna Husky), Dolores Redondo (with Amaia Salazar), (with Annika Kaunda); as well as the series of novels about detective Sonia Ruiz written by various authors, such as Lorenzo Silva and Noemí Trujillo, Andreu Martín, Esteban Navarro, and . Romero López also mentions the series of novels written by Antonio Santos Mercero about the character Sofía Luna, the first transgender police inspector in Spanish literature.
Novels Inspector Santana series Curvas peligrosas (Odisea Editorial, 2010, ) Contra las cuerdas (Editorial Alrevés, 2012, ) Cuentas pendientes (Editorial Alrevés, 2015, )
Standalone novels La casa roja (Literaturas Com Libros LcL, 2013, ) La puta que leía a Jack Kerouac (Lesrain 2007; Literaturas Com Libros LcL, 2012, ) Males decisions (Editorial Alrevés, 2017, ) La reina del punk: La enigmática y sorprendente historia de amor y rock de la groupie que vivió a mil por hora y se convirtió en leyenda (Redbook Ediciones, 2018, ) Los miércoles salvajes (Editorial Milenio, 2019, ) Mai més (Editorial Alrevés, 2020, ) Cerveza Mexicana (Extravertida editorial, 2021, )
Anthologies Hernández has participated in major short story anthologies in the noir genre:
Elles també maten, Anna Maria Villalonga (ed.) (Llibres del Delicte, 2014, ) Fundido en negro. (Antología de relatos del mejor calibre criminal femenino), Inmaculada Pertusa (ed.) (Editorial Alrevés, 2014, ) Diez negritos, nuevas voces del género negro español, and Javier Sánchez Zapatero (eds.) (Editorial Alrevés, 2015, ) Obscena. Trece relatos pornocriminales, (ed.) (Editorial Alrevés, 2016, ) Barcelona, viatge a la perifèria criminal, Àlex Martín Escribà and (eds.) (Editorial Alrevés, 2017, ) La cervesa de la Highsmith (Pagès Editors, 2021, )
Awards Versales Lesbian Poetry award (2009) Katharsis award for novel (2009), finalist Valencia Negra festival (2013), finalist for best novel for Contra las cuerdas Ciudad de Sant Adrià (2015), for La casa roja Cubelles Noir (2016), for the best crime novel written in Spanish by a woman and published in 2015, for Cuentas pendientes Cubelles Noir (2018), for the best crime novel written in Catalan in 2017, for Males decisions Ciudad de Lebrija (2021), for Cerveza mexicana
See also LGBT literature in Spain Noir fiction Detective fiction
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External links Personal website Black Club, a blog and book club about crime fiction Interview with Susana Hernández Marcet by literary criticism website Dr. Goodfellow, 18 November 2022 Cuentas pendientes, Susana Hernández, book review by María Dolores García Pastor in the now-defunct literary criticism website , 7 March 2016