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The chance discovery of a woman's body in 1969 shatters the tranquility of the Madrid town of Hortaleza and delivers a stark dose of reality in the waning years of the Franco regime. Eight years later, a demonstrator dies as a result of a charge by the armed police. These two violent deaths serve as a springboard for Pepo Paz Saz's exploration of recent Spanish history, from the final years of the dictatorship to the present day, with a focus on the victims of gender-based violence. Through prose that is both agile and meticulously crafted and precise, this social thriller questions the role of the state security forces during the Transition, as well as the hackneyed narrative that (almost) everything that happened during that time was "exemplary."