The Nobel Prize–winning author draws on his own investigation of an infamous murder in 1950s Peru to construct this acclaimed detective novel. When a young airman is found murdered near an air force base in the northern desert, Lieutenant Silva and his assistant, Officer Lituma, must investigate. With not so much as a squad car, they must hitch a ride to the crime scene. Though their superiors are indifferent, and the victim's commanding officer is openly hostile, Silva and Lituma remain committed to solving the riddle of young Palomino Molero's death. In his first detective novel, Mario Vargas Llosa delivers a deftly plotted story as he explores one of his signature themes: the despair one feels when attempting to be honest in a corrupt society. "Evoking landscape and mores in writing that is spare, rich and cruelly beautiful . . . the novel manages to meditate on evil, art, love and race while going about its business of solving a crime." — The New York Times