This is the first of the Havana quartet featuring Lieutenant Mario Conde, a tropical Marlowe. A body is found in a Havana park. A young transvestite dressed in a beautiful red evening dress, strangled. The victim had fled his family, finding refuge with Marques, an author living alone surrounded only by books, his house in ruins. In the baking heat of the Havana summer Conde investigates, moving through a Cuban reality where nothing is what it seems. Padura's masterful prose and eye for detail evoke the Havana that millions of tourists have come to know: crumbling architecture, peeling paintwork and a pulsating, searing sensuality beneath the tropical sun.

Translated by: Peter Bush