The S.S. Saint Louis spent several days anchored at Havana in 1939 while waiting for the Cuban authorities to allow 900 Jewish refugees from Germany into their country. Confident that a painting by Rembrandt that had belonged to their family since the 17th century - and which they had smuggled into the ship - would convince the Cubans to let them in, little Daniel Kaminsky and his uncle waited at the dock for their relatives to land. However their plan failed and the ship returned to Germany, taking away with her any chance of encounter. In 2007, with the crying of the painting in London, Daniel's son, Elías, travels from the US to Havana in order to find out what happened to this artwork and to his family. Detective Mario Conde is the only one who can help him.

Leonardo Padura (La Habana, 1955) trabajó como guionista, periodista y crítico, hasta lograr el reconocimiento internacional con la serie de novelas policiacas protagonizadas por el detective Mario Conde: Pasado perfecto, Vientos de cuaresma, Máscaras, Paisaje de otoño, Adiós, Hemingway, La neblina del ayer y La cola de la serpiente, traducidas a numerosos idiomas y merecedoras de premios como el Café Gijón 1995, el Dashiell Hammett 1997, 1998 y 2005, el Premio de las Islas 2000 y el Brigada 21. También ha escrito La novela de mi vida y El hombre que amaba a los perros, una trepidante reconstrucción de las vidas de Trotsky y Ramón Mercader, traducida a diez idiomas, vendidos sus derechos al cine y merecedora del Premio de la Crítica en Cuba, el Francesco Gelmi di Caporiacco 2010 y, en 2011, el Premio Carbet del Caribe, el Prix Initiales y el Prix Roger Caillois. En 2012, Padura recibió el Premio Nacional de Literatura de Cuba.