Years after his unceremonious firing from the National Police following an acto of heroic insubordination (recounted in The Sky Weeps for Me (2020), Inspector Dolores Morales--barely scraping by as a private eye--finds himself summoned before Miguel Soto, a powerful Nicaraguan oligarch whose step-daughter has gone missing. Morales is assigned the lucrative if daunting task of finding her, given that all he has are her name, two photographs, and three days to carry out the search. But thanks to the intrepid Dona Sofia's ingenuity, and the watchful if ethereal presence of former partner Bert Dixon, along with a host of colorful if reluctant confederates enlisted from among Managua's demimonde, Morales skillfully begins to expose and untangle a scandal of national proportions. The inspector's unexpected discoveries attract the personal attention and animosity of Nicaragua's director of national intelligence, whereupon the pursuer becomes the pursued, and Morales is presented with a painful dilemma. Suffused with the author's mastery of complex narrative, sharp characterization, ironic humor, and an ethos of human resilience, the second novel of Sergio Ramirez's Managua Trilogy dramatizes the venality and lust for power that underlie the recent brutal history of Nicaragua"--