The first of the Havana quartet featuring lieutenabt Mario Conde, a tropical Marlowe. 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. Conde is thrown into a tangled web of mysticism, politics and subversive activity. Captured perfectly in Padura's seamy, heat-soaked pages.' - The Guardian'
