A Light Comedy

Translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor.

The successful playwright and hapless adulterer Carlos Prullàs is in a quandary. The rehearsals for his latest production, directed by a childhood friend with a borderline personality, aren’t working.

His brief liaison with a neighbour’s wife has threatened to unhinge her. His friends seem to be growing wary of him: even his faithful maidservant looks as though she has her doubts. And then, just as the sweltering heat boils over, an influential local mafioso turns up stabbed in the chest. As the rehearsals lurch disastrously on and the playwright’s family blithely loll at their seaside resort, unaware of the pitfalls lurking behind the cabana, the criminal investigation tightens around the ill-starred Prullas, sending the playwright spiralling deep into the seedy underworld of Barcelona.