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.