In his greatest work, Sergio Ramírez transforms the most celebrated criminal trial in Nicaraguan history——the alleged murders in 1933 of two high society women and his employer by Oliverio Castañeda——into an examination of Nicaraguan society at the brink of the first Somosa dictatorship. Passion, money, sex, gossip, political intrigue, medical malpractice and judicial corruption merge into a novel that of courtroom drama wrapped in yellow journalism disguised as historical fiction.