Antonio Helú (original) (raw)

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). A common theme in Helú Atta's work was the lack of faith of the protagonist in the justice system.