Drum looks for a missing American in a sea of degenerate expats

An American has vanished in Spain, and it’s his father, not his wife, who wants him found. When Chester Drum arrives in Iberia, legs aching from the three-thousand-mile flight, he finds Andrea Hartshorn not panicked, not mourning, but hosting the party of the year. World-weary expatriates mill about the villa, guzzling her liquor and dancing, without a thought for their missing countryman. Andrea is far from sober, but finally Drum gets her to open up. Of course she wants her husband back. But more than that, she wants her daughter.

Robbie was last seen going south to Fuengirola, to confront a crippled bullfighter named Ruy Fuentes, who had been courting the Hartshorns’ toreador-mad daughter. Drum sets out to find the missing Hartshorns, and learns that in Spain, a bull’s horn is not the only romantic way to die.