The priest adjusted a cross hanging on the wall. It was a black cross without the image of Christ. Just a black cross on a grey surface. The prosecutor did not want to think about the cross burned into the forehead of the corpse... Felix Chacaltana Saldivar is a hapless, by-the-book prosecutor living in a small town, six-hundred kilometers from Lima. Until now he has led a life in which nothing exceptionally good or bad has ever happened to him. But when a charred and mutilated body, discovered during Carnival, signals the return of a serial murderer, Saldivar is inexplicably put in charge of the enquiry. As he investigates he must confront what happens to a man, and to a society, when death becomes the only certainty.
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Ha vivido en México, el Perú y España, y ha trabajado como periodista, guionista y traductor. En la actualidad colabora con diversos medios latinoamericanos y con El País. Es autor del libro de cuentos Crecer es un oficio triste (2003) y de las novelas Pudor (2005), que ha sido traducida a varias lenguas y cuenta con una versión cinematográfica, y Abril rojo (2006), ganadora del premio Alfaguara y El año en que nació el demonio (2023).