Mexico, 1990. The ruling political party is riddled with corruption, the federal police has been corrupted, even the local cops are corrupt. But Pepe Nitido battles these authorities in Michoácharo where he lives, and has been elected mayor on a reform ticket. Jorge, his Montreal friend who knows the town well from an earlier visit, must come again to Mexico for the inaugural fiesta!
But by the time Jorge, a university criminologist, arrives in Mexico, Pepe has disappeared. Kidnapped? Dead? Despite better instincts telling him not to get involved in the intrigues and conspiracies of this deeply foreign culture, Jorge begins a search for Pepe.
With the help of Felicio, a ninety-year-old doctor with a mind as clear as the finest tequila, Irini, a beautiful and clever woman with wide opal-green eyes, Ali Cran, a trickster and con-man who knows all people have not five but ten senses, and the often unscrupulous chief of police Rubén Reyes Ponce, Jorge confronts dangers he doesn't understand, antagonizes forces that want to get rid of him, and discovers a criminal underside of a Mexico which till now had only enchanted him. He also discovers, in himself, strengths and abilities he didn't know he was capable of, and in Michoácuaro a complexity and wholeness till then invisible to him.
"What Szanto has done is to create a wonderfully rich and detailed story that alternates between extreme tension and sheer comic absurdity. In doing so, he succeeds in evoking that addictive mix of the astonishing and the commonplace that has always made Mexico so fascinating." —Vancouver Sun