f Francoism and the formula of fear in Spanish crime fiction: The case of Jordi Sierra i Fabra’s Cinco días de octubre/Five Days in October

This article explores the generic conventions of Jordi Sierra i Bosch’s third novel of his ‘Inspector Mascarell’ series, Cinco días de octubre/Five Days in October (2011). The article situates this novel and the series in the context of the so-called return of historical memory in democratic, post-Franco Spain. In particular, it argues that Sierra i Fabra uses the narrative conventions of the detective thriller to transport readers to the past so they can experience the fear felt by the Republican losers of the Spanish Civil War living under the Franco regime and, in so doing, engage readers emotionally in this traumatic past with the aim of overcoming the nation’s historical disengagement.