Personas decentes

Havana, 2016. A historic event shakes Cuba: Barack Obama's visit in what has been called the "Cuban Thaw" -the first official visit by a US president since 1928-, accompanied by events such as a Rolling Stones concert and a Chanel fashion show turn the rhythm of the island upside down. For this reason, when a former leader of the Cuban government is found murdered in his apartment, the police, overwhelmed by the presidential visit, turn to Mario Conde to lend a hand in the investigation. Count will discover that the dead man had many enemies, because in the past he had acted as a censor so that the artists did not deviate from the slogans of the Revolution, and that he had been a despotic and cruel man who had ended the careers of many artists who they had not wanted to bow to his extortions. When a second corpse is found murdered with the same method a few days later, Conde must find out if the two deaths are related and what is behind these murders. Added to that plot is a story written by the protagonist, set a century earlier, when Havana was the Nice of the Caribbean and people lived thinking about the imminent change that Halley's Comet would produce. A murder case of two women in Old Havana uncovers the open fight between a powerful man, Alberto Yarini, refined and from a good family, kingpin of gambling and prostitution businesses, and his rival Lotot, a Frenchman, who disputes the preeminence. The development of these historical events will be connected to the history of the present in a way that not even Mario Conde suspects.