This series follows the investigations of a skeptical and disillusioned lieutenant, often pulled into cases that force him to confront the darker aspects of Cuban society and his own past. Each investigation uncovers layers of corruption, lost ideals, and personal dramas. The detective work is imbued with melancholy, poetry, and a profound understanding of human nature. Dive into a world of ambiguous characters and unforgettable atmosphere.
Lieutenant Mario Conde is asked to investigate the disappearance of Rafael Morin, a high-level business manager in the Cuban nomenklatura. He remembers Morin from their student days that Morin always got what he wanted, including Tamara the girl he was after. While pursuing the case, Conde confronts his lost love for Tamara and his dreams.
En los infernales días de la primavera cubana en que llegan los vientos calientes del sur, coincidiendo con la Cuaresma, al teniente Mario Conde, que acaba de conocer a Karina, una mujer bella y deslumbrante, aficionada al jazz y al saxo, le encargan una delicada investigación. Una joven profesora de química del mismo preuniversitario donde años atrás estudió el Conde ha aparecido asesinada en su apartamento, en el que aparecen además restos de marihuana. Así, al investigar la vida de la profesora, de impoluto expediente académico y político, el Conde entra en un mundo en descomposición, donde el arribismo, el tráfico de influencias, el consumo de drogas y el fraude revelan el lado oscuro de la sociedad cubana contemporánea. Paralelamente, el policía, enamorado de la bella e inesperada mujer, vive días de gloria sin imaginar el demoledor desenlace de esa historia de amor.
A young transvestite is found strangled in a Havana park. Mario Conde's first investigation into a young man's violent murder exposes the equally disturbing death of his beloved Cuba.
A brutally mutilated body is discovered washed up in the bay of Havana. The body of Miguel Forcade Mier, head smashed in by a baseball bat, genitals cut off by a dull knife. Forcade, once an official in the Cuban government responsible for the confiscation of the belongings of the bourgeoisie fleeing the revolution, was an exile in Miami.
A classic detective story that explores the last years of Hemingway's life, evoking both Cuba and this giant of American letters with enormous skill and wit.
Havana, 2003, 14 since Mario Conde retired from the police force and much has changed in Cuba. He makes a living trading in antique books bought from families selling off their libraries in order to survive. In the house of Alcides de Montes de Oca, a rich Cuban who fled after the fall of Batista, Conde discovers an extraordinary book collection.
In this new crime title from Padura, Cuba's most celebrated living author, Police InspectorMario Conde investigates a murder in the Barrio Chino, the rundown Chinatown of Havana.
"In 1939, the Saint Louis sails from Hamburg into Havana's port with hundreds of Jewish refugees seeking asylum from the Nazi regime. From the docks, nine-year-old Daniel Kaminsky watches as the passengers, including his mother, father, and sister, become embroiled in a fiasco of Cuban corruption. But the Kaminskys have a treasure that they hope will save them: a small Rembrandt portrait of Christ. Yet six days later the vessel is forced to leave the harbor with the family, bound for the horrors of Europe. The Kaminskys, along with their priceless heirloom, disappear. Nearly seven decades later, the Rembrandt reappears in an auction house in London, prompting Daniel's son to travel to Cuba to track down the story of his family's lost masterpiece"-- Provided by publisher
Cuban investigator Mario Conde pursues a mystery spanning centuries of occult history. He is asked to track down a stolen statue of the Virgen de Regla-a black Madonna. A quest that spans twenty-first century Havana as well as the distant past, as he delves as far back as the Crusades in an attempt to uncover the true provenance of the statue.