Ballad of Dog's Beach (in original Portuguese Balada da Praia dos Cães) is a fiction novel by the Portuguese author José Cardoso Pires, relating the investigation into the murder of a political dissident, taking place around one month later by 1961. The novel is largely based on contemporary reports of a real murder that took place. The real story is the assassination in early 1961 of Army captain Almeida Santos by Jean Jacques, an Army m. d. They were both dissidents of the political regime who escaped from prison with the help of a prison guard. The three men took refuge in a house in Guincho Beach, twenty km outside Lisbon. They were joined by Maria José Maldonado Sequeira, a beautiful young woman who had an affair with A. Santos. While waiting for opportunity to leave the country, Mari