Chapter 6 argues that in the Mediterranean crime novel, women are scrutinised by the male gaze, their body parts being vivisected and objectified by the male detective. Focusing the investigation on the male detective and on male teams, these series fail to acknowledge societal changes in terms of female participation in work and society at large. Violence against women is frequent in these narratives, but is never framed in terms of gender violence but of racial and political (or state) violence, if not diminished into an individual crime caused by greed or deviance. The female writers analysed in this monograph also fail to address gender issues convincingly. Both Giménez Bartlett and Aykol centre their series around a female character. Yet these characters simply replicate the male gaze and objectify male characters. They are also constructed as postfeminist women who are commercially motivated and mistake consumerism for liberty. These series also fail to address gender violence, replacing the female as a victim of patriarchally engineered socio-political inequalities with the representation of villainous mother figures capable of emotional manipulation, violence and murder.

Chapter 4 focuses on the challenges Puritanism posed to masculinity by examining the case of war hero Captain John Underhill. Famous for his triumphant massacre of the Pequot Indians, Underhill was the definition of military manhood, or hypermasculinity. Trained by his father to be a soldier, Underhill embraced a masculinity of power, sexual prowess, pride, and heroism that was not a good fit in Puritan New England. The new Puritan man needed to moderate some of the excesses of traditional masculine norms. Shortly after his wartime heroism, Underhill found himself excommunicated and banished from Massachusetts Bay, and he clumsily navigated this gender terrain, ultimately gaining readmission to the church and colony by offering a thoroughly over-the-top, feminized, weeping confession. While Underhill fought for the status and power he thought he deserved, other men faced similar problems of competing masculinities. Some conformed, and others realized that they could not survive the New England way. Laymen in charge of church discipline created a middle ground of masculinity that blended versions, providing men a language and a sense of public duty that preserved their manhood.