When Nuria Marti, the beautiful Spanish figure skater, 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 their seaside town. What he doesn't tell her is that he paid for it using embezzled public funds. Such deceit is not without repercussions, and the skating rink soon becomes a crime scene . . .

Rife with political corruption, sex, jealousy and frustrated passion, Roberto Bolano's The Skating Rink - narrated in turn by a corrupt and pompous civil servant, a beleaguered romantic poet, and a duplicitous local entrepreneur - is a darkly atmospheric tale of murder and its motives.