Alicia Giménez Bartlett

Alicia Giménez Bartlett is a Spanish novelist born in 1951 in Almansa, Albacete. She is best known for her long-running crime series featuring detective Petra Delicado and her partner Fermín Garzón, set in Barcelona. The series, beginning with Ritos de muerte (1996), has been translated into numerous languages and adapted for Spanish television. Giménez Bartlett is one of the most popular crime writers in Spain and her Petra Delicado series is notable for its feminist perspective and its sharp social observation of contemporary Spain. The series has been praised internationally for bringing a strong female detective to the foreground of Spanish crime fiction. Hombres desnudos (Naked Men), her 2015 Premio Planeta winner, is a thriller about a middle-aged woman who becomes obsessed with a much younger male escort, exploring questions of desire, obsession, and the power dynamics of gender in contemporary Spain. The novel demonstrated Giménez Bartlett's range beyond the genre conventions of her Petra Delicado series. She is one of the most commercially successful and culturally significant Spanish crime writers of her generation.