First published 2025
Professor Cristina Rivera Garza finds a dead man in a dark alley. Scrawled on the brick wall beside the body, someone has written a message in coral nail polish: "Beware of me, my love / beware of the silent woman in the desert." After she reports the crime, Cristina becomes the primary informant for the case. The detective assigned to investigate has developed an unexpected fascination with poetry and carries a record of unsolved cases. More male bodies appear throughout the city, each accompanied by cryptic verses. The detective struggles to decode the poems while trying to determine if a coordinated wave of violence is sweeping through their world. As the investigation deepens, it pulls Cristina from her classroom into the complex territories of Latin American poetry and art. The story moves with dreamlike logic through a city where death pervades daily life and violence follows gendered patterns. The narrative examines the shifting landscapes of desire and sexuality while inverting conventional crime story expectations.
Genres: literary-fiction, mystery, crime, detective, psychological-thriller, academic
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: detective, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Latin America
Period: Contemporary
320 pages · Hardcover · Hogarth
Content warnings: death, violence