During his lifetime, Pablo Neruda, the Chilean Nobel Laureate, held various diplomatic positions abroad and served as adviser to President Salvador Allende. He was hospitalised at the time of the coup d’état led by Augusto Pinochet and died of prostate cancer shortly afterwards, on 23 September 1973. As well as his political and historical poems, Neruda was renowned for his love poetry.  This is the backdrop to Roberto Ampuero’s engaging detective novel, the first of his books to be translated into English by Carolina De Robertis. It opens in 2006 with Cayetano Brulé, a Cuban émigré from Miami, discovering Neruda’s photograph on the back of a menu in a café in Valparaíso, prompting him to recall his brief relationship with t