Following the chance discovery of certain documents, a historian sets out to solve the mystery of a murder committed in the building where he lived as a ten-year-old in Mexico City's Colonia Roma in autumn 1942. Mexico had just declared war on Germany, and its capital became a colorful cauldron of European émigrés: German communists, Nazi spies, Spanish republicans, Trotsky and his disciples, Balkan kings, financiers, and secret agents from Allied and Axis countries alike. As the historian-turned-detective begins his investigation, he introduces us, chapter by chapter, to an eccentric parade of characters from Mexico City's political, artistic, intellectual, and upper classes. Pitol constructs a novel that turns on mistaken identities, blurred memories, and conflicting interest, and whose protagonist is haunted by the inescapable possibility that he might never uncover the truth.