"As Barcelona prepares for the Games, the city is turned over to make way for new roads, a new stadium, and the giant prawns of Mariscal. Private Investigator Pepe Carvalho - who remembers the good old days when a hammer was always to be found with a sickle - now finds himself forced to work for Olympic entrepreneurs for whom the only game in town is to make a fast buck." As Montalban's overweight hero trawls the city's backstreets, finding dead bodies and broken socialist promises, he uncovers the older, seedier Barcelona hidden behind the shiny new Olympic City. Like his beloved city, Carvalho is forced to confront the sins of the past.