When a human skeleton is discovered on Ernest Hemingway's home in Havana, police inspector Mario Conde is called up out of retirement to unearth the truth. In the course of his investigations, Conde gradually reconstructs the mysterious goings-on of the night of 3rd October 1958 and in doing so is forced to come to terms with a very different side to the character of his former literary hero. Padura Fuentes cleverly cuts between Conde's world and that of Hemingway's Cuba four decades earlier. In the heat and rum haze, the two seem slowly to merge as the reader is taken on an extraordinary journey into the past and into the personality of one of the twentieth century's most enigmatic and interesting writers. It's a masterful and totally convincing portrait that emerges, as well as a riveting mystery that keeps the reader on tenterhooks until the very final pages.

El primer fin de semana de 1989 una insistente llamada de telefono arranca de su resaca al teniente Mario Conde, un policia esceptico y desenganado. El Viejo, su jefe en la Central, le llama para encargarle un misterioso y urgente caso: Rafael Morin, jefe de la Empresa de Importaciones y Exportaciones del Ministerio de Industrias, falta de su domicilio desde el dia de Ano Nuevo. Quiere el azar que el desaparecido sea un ex companero de estudios de Conde, un tipo que ya entonces, aun acatando las normas establecidas, se destacaba por su brillantez y autodisciplina. Por si fuera poco, este caso enfrenta al teniente con el recuerdo de su antiguo amor por la joven Tamara, ahora casada con Morin. El Conde -asi le conocen sus amigos-, ira descubriendo que el aparente pasado perfecto sobre el que Rafael Morin ha ido labrando su brillante carrera ocultaba ya sus sombras.

A journalist and assistant in a veterinary clinic, flashes back towards an episode in his life when he met a man who used to walk by the beach with two Russian dogs. After several meetings, the man said Jaime Lopez was his name, and began to tell him his confidences focusing on the figure of Trotsky's murderer, Ramon Mercader, of whom he claims have been friends.

One autumn night, fishermen discovered a corpse of a man on the beach of El Chivo, in Havana. The victim, Miguel Forcade Mier, was brutally murdered, with an unusual, almost inexplicable rage. This crime will remove an old network of corruption and old ambitions frustrated because, in fact, in the sixties Forcade had addressed formally expropriation of art for the bourgeoisie seized after the Revolution.

A woman was beaten, raped and then strangled with a towel. Marijuana is found in her apartment and her wardrobe is suspiciously beyond the means of a high school teacher. Grand buildings and secrets hidden behind faded doors and corruption. This story in Cuba, its life of sex, music and great friendships as it is a story of a murder investigation.