The narrative of hard-boiled crime fiction is typically embedded in a city, and knowledge of this place is intrinsic to the investigator’s characterization. Through an examination of Jenny Siler’s Easy Money (1998) and Flashback (2004), this essay explores the impact on both the investigative narrative and the representation of identity when place is reconfigured. By employing Doreen Massey’s analysis of the politics of place and space and Manuel Castells’ concept of the “space of flows,” I examine how Siler’s work brings into play concepts of legitimacy, geopolitical borders, and belonging. I consider how the removal of symbolic meaning from a place through the rejection of its boundary condition or the negation of its past has a political impact: it challenges what and who is given value.

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The superhero as a masculine ideal has been extensively scrutinized; he is perceived as a man of physical strength, selflessness and conformity but also one capable of aggression, toxic violence, vigilantism and emotional detachment. Nolan’s superhero, Batman, is situated within this discourse of contradictory masculinity. Recent scholarly discussion has considered how superheroes, including Batman, portray a masculinity designed to fulfil the desires of a post-9/11 audience. This article will extend this examination of contradictory masculinity to consider the father figures who teach Batman to be a superhero and what their instruction identifies as desirable heroic traits in the decade following the 9/11 tragedy. This form of heroic masculinity is not new and exhibits an uncanny resemblance to the cowboy who, like the superhero, is a stylized, uniquely American character. This article will argue that this is a masculinity that is learned and then performed: it reveals the imitative nature of gender, such that Nolan’s trilogy acts as a series of lessons in the problematic, fictive and performative expressions of masculinity in a post-9/11 world.