Benjamín Chaparro is a retired law clerk still obsessed by the brutal, decades-old rape and murder of a young married woman in her own bedroom. While attempting to write a book about the case, he revisits the details of the investigation, recalling along the way the major players: Pablo Sandoval, Chaparro's erratic yet brilliant partner; Ricardo Morales, the deceased woman's husband, who never recovered from the tragedy; and Isidoro Gómez, the sickeningly obsessive suspect with whom Chaparro feels an uneasy kinship. As he reaches into the past, Chaparro also recalls the beginning of his long, unrequited love for Irene, then just an intern, now a respected judge. Set in the Buenos Aires of the 1970s, Sacheri's tale reveals the underpinnings of Argentina's Dirty War and takes on the question of justice-- what it really means and in whose hands it belongs. This haunting crime thriller also explores the boundaries of love in all its forms: adoration, devotion and obsession.