Assignment: Finding one of Argentina's 30,000 "Disappeared" ... likely outcome: Becoming one yourself. The Argentine army's "Dirty War" disappeared 30,000 people, and the last thing Pepe Carvalho wants is to investigate one of the vanished, even if that missing person is his cousin. But blood proves thicker than a fine Mendoza Cabernet Sauvignon, even for a jaded gourmand like Pepe, and so at his family's request he leaves Barcelona for Buenos Aires. What follows is perhaps Manuel Vázquez Montalbán's masterpiece: a combination white-knuckle investigation and moving psychological travelogue. Pepe quickly learns that "Buenos Aires is a beautiful city hell-bent on self-destruction," and finds himself on a trail involving boxers and scholars, military torturers and seductive semioticians, Borges fans and cold-blooded murderers. And despite the wonders of the Tango and the country's divine cuisine, he also knows one thing: He'll have to confront the traumas of Argentina's past head on if he wants not only to find his cousin, but simply stay alive.

Pepe Carvalho travels from Barcelona to Buenos Aires to search for his cousin who disappeared in the Argentine army's Dirty War, but soon finds that he is risking his own life by delving into the traumas of Argentina's history.

Introducing one of crime fiction’s most legendary detectives, and greatest writers, to America When Antonio Jauma, a director of the multinational conglomerate Petnay, is murdered, his widow seeks out private investigator Pepe Carvalho, who had met and forgotten the playboy executive after their single chance encounter—back when Carvalho still worked for the CIA. Jauma was a “womanizer,” according to a friend, “of the least pleasant sense,” and the police have decided that the murder is the work of an unhappy pimp. But Carvalho doggedly pursues his own phlegmatic investigation, with time out for his signature book burning (Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reasoning; Sholokov’s And Quiet Flows the Don), cooking (leek soup and a freshly-caught steamed turbot), and running with his girlfriend Charo, whose last name he can’t remember.

Barcelona detective Pepe Carvalho’s radical past catches up with him when a powerful businessman—a patron of artists and activists—is found dead after going missing for a year. In search of the spirit of Paul Gauguin, Stuart Pedrell—eccentric Barcelona businessman, construction magnate, dreamer, and patron of poets and painters—disappeared not long after announcing plans to travel to the South Pacific. A year later he is found stabbed to death at a construction site in Barcelona. Gourmand gumshoe Pepe Carvalho is hired by Pedrell’s wife to find out what happened. Carvalho, a jaded former communist, must travel through circles of the old anti-Franco left wing on the trail of the killer. But with little appetite for politics, Carvalho also leads us on a tour through literature, cuisine, and the criminal underbelly of Barcelona in a typically brilliant twist on the genre by a Spanish master.

As Barcelona prepares for the Games, the city is turned over to make way for new roads, a new stadium and the giant prawns of Mariscal. Private Investigator Pepe Carvalho - who remembers the good old days when a hammer always came with a sickle - now finds himself forced to work for Olympic entrepreneurs whose only game plan is to make a fast buck. As Montalbán's overweight hero cruises the backstreets of the Barcelona dream, finding dead bodies and broken socialist promises, he remembers an older, seedier Barcelona hidden behind the shiny new Olympic City. Like his beloved city, Carvalho is forced to confront the sins of the past.

After a visit to Argentina, Spain's most famous detective Pepe Carvalho is back in his beloved Barcelona and is swiftly embroiled in a murderous scandal amid the murky politics of 21st century Catalonia. When the son of a rich financier is murdered, Carvalho is called upon to investigate his mysterious death. In his quest for the killer, Carvalho has to infiltrate the world of Satanism and religious sects.The bon vivant detective also faces problems in his personal life, torn as he is between two women - his on-off partner Charo, and her eternal hesitations, and the enigmatic Yes, a lover from his youth. The professional and personal merge and a devastating betrayal leaves Carvalho fighting for his life.As ever, Montalbán astutely reflects on the current political situation in Europe with the added bonus of delicious Catalan recipes. This is Montalbán at the top of his game.

The author tells of his own development as a student, "of how he and his intrepid colleagues were converted to chamber music ... [and of how] four individualists master and then overcome the confining demands of ensemble playing."--Jacket.