Told through the memories of four women who spend their days fashioning homemade explosives and participating in the kidnap and torture of communists, the novel details the clandestine activities of an extreme right-wing Salazarist faction resisting the country's new embrace of democracy.

Warning to the Crocodiles (Exortação aos Crocodilos) has won:
- Best Novel by the Portuguese Writers Association (Grande Prémio de Romance e Novela da Associação Portuguesa de Escritores) (1999)
- The D. Dinis Prize of the Casa de Mateus Foundation (Prémio D. Dinis da Fundação Casa de Mateus) (1999)
- The Austrian State Literature Prize (Prémio de Literatura Europeia do Estado Austríaco) (2000)