Leonard Padura – författare

A brutally mutilated body is discovered washed up in the bay of Havana. The body of Miguel Forcade Mier, head smashed in by a baseball bat, genitals cut off by a dull knife. Conde immerses himself in the dark history of expropriations of works of art, paintings that have vanished without trace, corrupt civil servants and old families that lost much, but not everything. Here is the disillusion of Padura's generation, many of them veterans of the war in Angola, and now discovering the corruption of those that preceded them.

Lieutenant Mario Conde is suffering from a terrible New Year's Eve hangover. Though it's the middle of a weekend, he is asked to urgently investigate the mysterious disappearance of a high level business manager in the Cuban nomenklatura. Rafael Morin had been a student with Conde, good-looking, brilliant, a |reliable comrade| who always got what he wanted, including Tamara the girl Conde was after. While pursuing the case in a decaying but adored Havana, Conde confronts his lost love for Tamara and the dreams and illusions of his generation.

24 year old Lissette Delgado 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. Lieutenant Conde is pressured by the highest authority' to conclude this investigation quickly when chance leads him into the arms of a beautiful redhead. This is a Havana of crumbling, grand buildings, secrets hidden behind faded doors and corruption. This is as much a eulogy for Cuba, its life of sex, music and great friendships as it is a story of a murder investigation.'

Havana, 2003 - 14 years since Mario Conde retired from the police force and much has changed in Cuba. Now an antique book trader, Conde discovers an extraordinary book collection in the house of Alcides de Montes de Oca, a rich Cuban who fled after the fall of Batista, and, buried within a newspaper article about Violeta del Rio, a beautiful bolero singer who disappeared in the 1950s. Conde's intuition sets him off on an investigation that leads him into a darker Cuba, now flooded with dollars and populated by pimps, prostitutes and drug dealers.