A skillfully plotted tale of misdeeds and murder—introducing Inspector Hector Salgado, a detective with a complicated past, a love of cinema . . . and a tendency to violence. Under a hot Barcelona sun, a killer is feeling the heat . When the death of a vulnerable young witness in a case of human trafficking and voodoo causes the normally calm Police Inspector Hector Salgado to beat someone up, he is moved off the project and sent instead to investigate a teenager's fall to his death in one of Barcelona's uptown areas. As Salgado begins to uncover the inconvenient truths behind the city's most powerful families, two seemingly unsolvable cases are set to implode under the hot Barcelona sun.

Inspector Hector Salgado, the salty hero of The Summer of Dead Toys, returns in another crime thriller set in Barcelona during a cold snap. Senior staff at Alemany Cosmetics come home with a secret after a team-building retreat in a remote country house. Each has anonymously received a photo showing dogs hanging dead from a tree near the farm. Now they're committing suicide, one by one. The connection between the gut-wrenching photos and heartbreaking suicides remains a befuddling mystery—one that racks Barcelona's executive think tanks, and could lead to a frightening end. Deciphering the personalitites of these youthful executives and their power structures isn't easy, but Inspector Salgado has his own ways of making them speak. Meanwhile, Barcelona is freezing, suffering from an unusual cold spell and Salgado's wife, Ruth, is still missing. Salgado must break through the icily furtive layers of this young group in order to save his family, his reputation, and his city.

Mayo de 2011. En una casa abandonada, cerca del aeropuerto, la policía descubre dos cadáveres envueltos en un sudario de flores. Abrazados. Sepultados junto a una gran cantidad de dinero. Podría tratarse de una joven pareja de amantes que desapareció hace siete años. Tras un azaroso juicio mediático, el caso se cerró en falso. Héctor Salgado y su equipo se encargan de la investigación, un rompecabezas con demasiadas pistas. Mientras tanto, en las principales plazas del país los indignados se proponen desvelar al fin el rostro verdadero del poder. Héctor, unido más que nunca a la agente Leire Castro en la búsqueda de su ex esposa, también tendrá que escarbar allá donde nunca imaginó, hasta llegar al oscuro origen de la desaparición de Ruth, hasta llegar a una verdad de consecuencias trágicas e imprevisibles. «El planteamiento de las novelas es macabro y sensacional, pero su mejor baza es el personaje de Héctor Salgado.» New York Times Book Review