This article considers how Máscaras (1995), the third novel in Cuban author Leonardo Padura's post‐Soviet detective fiction series Las cuatro estaciones, transforms the genre. This article argues that at once using and subverting US tenets of noir, the author successfully transfigures archetypes of form and content, in particular commenting on the figure of the Hombre Nuevo. The article discusses Máscaras as an example of a trans‐genre/transgenericidad: the novel demonstrates how postmodern symptoms such as self‐awareness and metanarrativity, deviant from the archetypal crime genre, reinforce and inform notions of fluid and performative representations of bodies and sexualities in Cuba.