Facing down his 60th birthday, Mario Conde is a Cuban cop who'd rather be a writer, and he has begun to wonder what he has accomplished with his life. Rescue comes in the form of a new case: an old Marxist who has become a practitioner of Santería engages Conde to track down a stolen statue of the Virgen de Regla—a black Madonna—that allegedly possesses strange powers. This sets Conde on a quest that spans 21st century Havana as well as the distant past, as he delves as far back as the Crusades in an attempt to find the statue. Leonardo Padura made his name with his Four Seasons quartet—the basis for the 2016 Netflix series—and this marks Conde's eight outing.