The skating rink - Roberto Bolao

Rife with political corruption, sex, jealousy and frustrated passion, The Skating Rink is a darkly atmospheric chronicle of one summer season in the seaside town of Z, on the Costa Brava, north of Barcelona.

The story revolves around the beautiful figure-skating champion Nuria Mart. When she is suddenly dropped from the Olympic team a besotted admirer builds a secret ice rink for her in the ruins of an old mansion on the outskirts of town. What he doesn't tell her is that he paid for it using embezzled public funds; but such a betrayal is only the beginning and the skating rink soon becomes a crime scene . . .

Told in short suspenseful chapters by three alternating male narrators - a corrupt and pompous civil servant, a beleaguered, yet still romantic, itinerant poet, and a duplicitous local entrepreneur - The Skating Rink is a wholly engrossing tale of murder and its motives.