[1][2] Civil Guard member Corporal Lituma has been transferred to the rural mountain town of Naccos, where he investigates the disappearances of three men, while under the constant threat of Senderista guerrilla attacks.

Civil Guard policeman Corporal Lituma has been transferred to the tiny Andean community of Naccos, populated almost entirely by laborers for a highway construction project on the verge of being shut down.

Lituma, along with his lovesick adjutant Tomás Carreño, are tasked with investigating the disappearances of three men from the village: Demetrio Chanca, a construction foreman and former mayor on the run from the Senderista terrucos, Casimiro Huarcaya, an albino itinerant merchant who claims to be a pishtaco when drunk, and Pedro Tinoco, a mentally disabled and mute man who had been living with the two policemen and performing chores for them.

Interwoven with the story of Lituma's investigations are vignettes about the lives of the three disappeared men, Carreño's one-sided love affair with Mercedes Trelles, and the violent deaths of tourists, ecologists, and other non-working class people at the hands of the Senderista terrucos.

Initially convinced that the terrucos were responsible, Lituma learns more about the spiritual history of the region and begins to suspect that Dionisio and Adriana, the socially powerful owners of the local bar, had something to do with the disappearances.

In 1962, Vargas Llosa was asked by the Peruvian President Fernando Belaúnde Terry to join the Investigatory Commission, a task force to inquire into the massacre of eight journalists at the hands of the villagers of Uchuraccay.