"The Woman Who Came at Six O'Clock" was first published in 1950 in El espectador, a Bogotá, Columbia, daily publication, where Gabriel García Márquez was already a renowned journalist. This twin pattern of fiction and journalism has influenced many of García Márquez's works, including his best-known novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. The novel is a key example of the magical realism movement—which García Márquez helped to develop. It was after the success of his longer works that the author's earliest short stories, which had received little critical attention when they were first published, began to get reprinted and reviewed. Many critics consider "The Woman Who Came at Six O'Clock" the best of these early stories, which are often thought of as failed experiments.

The story tells of an unnamed woman prostitute who comes into José's diner everyday at six o'clock for a free meal. One day, she comes in and convinces him to say that she came in earlier so that she has an alibi for the murder she has just committed. The story explores such themes as the justification of murder, the power of a person's reputation, and the different realities that people experience. Critics note that García Márquez was influenced by other popular authors, including Hemingway, whose short story, "The Killers," is considered by many to be a source of inspiration for "The Woman Who Came at Six O'Clock." Although the story has been reprinted in various collections since 1972's Ojos de perro azul (translated as Eyes of a Blue Dog), today it can be found in Collected Stories, translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa and J. S. Bernstein, and published by Perennial Classics in 1999.