Author: Arturo Pérez-Reverte
- Fiction
- Alfaguara
- ISBN:  9786071104427
- Release Date: 01-01-1970
-Reviewed by: America Reads Spanish

El asedio takes place in Cádiz during the Spanish War of Independence in 1811 and 1812. While Spain is occupied by the French army and fights for its freedom, Cádiz is witnessing a different kind of massacre. Women’s bodies are found throughout the city in strategic places, mimicking a chess board. El asedio is not a proper historical or war novel like Cabo Trafalgar or Un día de cólera by the same author, but rather a complex thriller featuring a corrupt policeman, the heiress of a powerful local family, a sea captain, a taxidermist, a guerilla fighter from the salt marshes and an eccentric artilleryman. In this crime novel the laws of probability and precise calculations based on mathematics and physics are key to the outcome of the story.