A hair-raising book that delivers Bolaño's signature mix of mordant wit and romantic tenderness, The Skating Rink is both a crime and a love story. The story starts off with Gaspar Heredia - writer, Mexican, illegal immigrant, and stand-in for Bolaño himself - who meets Remo Moran, a businessman who pulled himself up to wealth from his inauspicious beginnings as a stall vendor of cheap tourist souvenirs. Moran hires Heredia as night watchman for a campground Moran runs as a stopping ground for many illegal immigrants. Heredia, out of boredom, starts spying on Moran's odd friends and accidentally stumbles across a skating rink built by a corrupt civil servant - Enric Rosquelles: pompous, fat, squat and ugly - who has diverted public funds to secretly build the rink on behalf of the love of his life: María, a young blonde babe whose abiding passion is to make it onto the Spanish Olympic ice-skating team and who, unbeknownst to Enric, is having a fling with Remo Moran, our successful businessman risen from cheap souvenirs. Alas, the discovery of Enric's crimes leads to madcap blackmail, more crime, sex, intrigue - and murder. Told in rotating narratives of the three men whose actions revolve around the young blonde skating babe and her dim-witted but strong-willed manipulations.

Set in the imaginary resort town of Z, north of Barcelona, Spain.