Bernard and his sister Eloisa live in a ramshackle house, the rest of their ancient past and prosperity. They are waiting for their old and sick Aunt Lina to die, to inherit her vast fortune and meanwhile have a morbid existence, full of obsessions and manias.

On a beach in Barcelona appears the body of a young man, his face eaten by fish, who has tattooed on his arm the phrase: "I was born to revolutionize the hell." So begins a strange enigma. To begin we must find a name to this dead, find their identity. This is the charge receiving Pepe Carvalho detective Galician, former CIA agent and vocational skeptical, which does not prevent you from enjoying and savoring the pleasures of good food and good bed. Among the Barcelona underworld and the streets and canals of Amsterdam, Carvalho soon gives the answer.