In the squalid settlement of Poso Wells, women have been regularly disappearing but the authorities have shown little interest. When the leading presidential candidate comes to town, he and his entourage are electrocuted in a macabre, darkly hilarious accident witnessed by a throng of astonished spectators. The sole survivor-next in line for the presidency-inexplicably disappears from sight. Gustavo Varas, a principled journalist, picks up the trail, which leads him into a violent, lawless underworld, and ultimately to a strange group of almost supernatural blind men. Bella Altamirano, a fearless local woman, is on her own crusade to pierce the settlement's code of silence, ignoring the death threats that result from her efforts. It turns out that the disappearance of the candidate and those of the women are intimately connected, and not just to a local crime wave, but to a multinational magnate's plan to plunder the country's ecologically sensitive cloud forest. A political satire and noir thriller, laced with humor and a sci-fi twist, Poso Wells plunges its readers into dark passages where things are as uncontrolled and overheated as the lava from a smoking volcano, which is where the story ends.
