Antonio Helú
Antonio Helú Atta (1900–1972) was a Mexican screenwriter and film director. According to Darrell B. Lockhart, Helú Atta was supposedly the first writer to have created a recurring Mexican detective figure in literature, namely Máximo Roldán. The originality of this character was that he did not belong to a law enforcement agency, but was himself a minor criminal ("Roldán" would be the anagram of "ládron", "thief" in Spanish).
Antonio Helú
- Name
- Antonio Helú Atta
- Born
- 17 June 1900
- Birthplace
- San Luis Potosi, Mexico
- Died
- 20 December 1972
- Place of death
- Mexico City, Mexico
- Occupation
- Writer, Director
- Nationality
- Mexico
- Languages
- Spanish
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Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
wikidata · Q20684169 · wikipedia · Antonio Helú
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
The documentary record
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Institutions cited
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Not stated by the sources cited: nationality
Complete reading chain (JSON)In this article
Biography
Biography
A common theme in Helú Atta's work was the lack of faith of the protagonist in the justice system. Referring to Helú Atta, the poet Xavier Villaurrutia stated "For the readers of police novels exists a small oasis of police stories by Antonio Helú". According to the writer Carlos Monsiváis, Helú Atta was "an author that truly believed in detective literature and dedicated most of his life to it". Helú Atta also translated in Spanish works by Mark Twain and Nathaniel Hawthorne. He was the founder of the magazine Selecciones policiacas y de misterio, the Spanish version of the magazine Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Antonio Helú Atta • Born — 17 June 1900 • Birthplace — San Luis Potosi, Mexico • Died — 20 December 1972 • Place of death — Mexico City, Mexico • Occupation — Writer, Director • Years Active — 1936-1960 (film)
Documentary record
Antonio Helú appears in the authority records of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek as a writer (1900 – 1972). Antonio Helú was born in San Luis Potosí (1900) and died in Mexiko (1972).
Director
Director
• The Obligation to Assassinate (1937) • The Pretty Indian Girl (1938) • The Hypnotist (1940) • When the Ground Trembled (1942)
Novels
Novels
• Pepe Vargas al teléfono, 1925. 29 pages. • El centro de gravedad, 1925. • Los predestinados, 1925.
Plays
Plays
• (co-writer) El crimen del insurgentes: comedia policiaca en tres actos, 1935.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
San Luis Potosí.
Birth place
Mexico City.
Death place
Screenwriter
• Arsène Lupin (1947) • The Murderer X (1955) • Father Against Son (1955) • Arm in Arm Down the Street (1956) • The Medallion Crime (1956)
Text attribution
Licensing
Text attribution
Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Antonio Helú, revision 1356895031 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Lockhart p.105
- 2.Lockhart p.105
- 3.Lockhart p.106
- 4.Mike Strayer. The Avant-Garde Detective Fiction of Antonio Helú. Researchgate.net. January 2015.
- 5.Lockhart p.107
Bibliography printed in the source article · 4
- Darrell B. Lockhart. Latin American Mystery Writers: An A-to-Z Guide. Greenwood Publishing Group. 2004. 978-0-313-30554-2.
- Persephone Braham. Crimes against the State, Crimes against Persons: Detective Fiction in Cuba and Mexico. Univ Of Minnesota Press. 2004.
- Glen S. Close. Contemporary Hispanic Crime Fiction: A Transatlantic Discourse on Urban Violence. Palgrave Macmillan. 2008. 978-0230607972.
- Fernando Fabio Sánchez. Artful Assassins: Murder as Art in Modern Mexico. Vanderbilt University Press. 2010. 978-0826517265.
References
Citations
References
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reference work
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 20 August 2026.
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