Barcelona, Spring 2022. The morning new recruit Vicente Misfit reports for his first day at "The Organisation", a meeting is called to discuss three mysteries:

1) A man has been found hanged in a room in a hotel on the Rambla San José.
2) An Englishman by the name of Jenkins has disappeared from his luxury yacht in the port.
3) The canning company Conservas Fernández is the only firm in these times of high inflation not to have increased its prices at all.

But what is The Organisation? A secret department created in 1944 that through bureaucratic inertia has never quite ceased to exist, nor ever quite had the funds to acheive anything of consquence. But now its hour may have finally arrived.

Convinced that the mysteries are linked, the Boss dispatches his operatives into the field to find the connection, the missing Englishman, the hotel murderer and the reason behind Conservas Fernández's reasonable prices. What they discover will surprise everyone - the reader included.

A wonderfully knowing screwball comedy and a nod to certain other secret agents gone to seed, this is vintage Mendoza, a ripping read from the author of An Englishman in Madrid one of the true greats of Spanish letters.

Translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor