Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

In a Barcelona beach corpse of a young man appears, his face eaten by fish, who has tattooed on his arm the phrase: "I was born to revolutionize hell." So begins a strange enigma. To begin we must find a name for this dead find their identity. This is the task that receives Pepe Carvalho, Galician detective, former CIA and vocational skeptical, which does not prevent you enjoy and savor the pleasures of good food and good bed.

A meeting of the Communist Party is taking place when suddenly the lights go off and the head of the Party is murdered. The government runs an official investigation and the Communist Party hires Pepe Carvalho, a private investigator. As both investigations unfold, they soon come to very different conclusions.