Carlos Ruiz Zafón

The past and present intermingle with possibilities of terror, loss, and hatred, as does the opportunity for forgiveness, release and repentance.

The Prisoner of Heaven is the third book in the series, of which there will surely be another, and continues the story of booksellers, writers, dictatorship, civil war, family secrets, history, and individuals struggling with right and wrong.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon clearly has Barcelona and its everchanging weather in his bones, as it seeps through the pages with traditional clarity and simultaneous screams at authority.

Contrition is not easily given or accepted; pretense is seldom tolerated; and contrived conclusions or expectations rarely fulfilled.

An exquisite example of Mr. Ruiz Zafon’s ability to summarize a character’s reflections about a situation is exemplified when Fermin declares, “If there’s going to be a flavor in vogue in this age of butchery, it will be the stink of falsehood and urine disguised in a thousand euphemisms.”

(...)

In his multimillion-selling debut, The Shadow of the Wind, and its sequel, The Angel's Game, Carlos Ruiz Zafón affectionately revived the traits of the penny dreadful, refining them into a gothic tale of lost books, beautiful women and sinister, diabolical villains.

The Prisoner of Heaven is the third part of the story and, like the first, is narrated by bookseller Daniel Sempere. But it too contains stories within stories, and the real narrative here belongs to the irrepressible Fermín Romero de Torres, who tells Daniel the secrets of his time as a prisoner in Barcelona's infamous Montjuïc castle, where dissidents were "disappeared" by Franco's regime. "The Prisoner of Heaven" was the nickname of a fellow inmate, the writer David Martín (also the narrator of The Angel's Game). Through Fermín, Daniel learns a dreadful secret concerning his own mother's death, and discovers that he has a mortal enemy.

Zafón's characters and dialogue are as lively and full-blooded as ever, but it is hard to escape the sense that this novel is slighter than its predecessors. By ending on a cliffhanger, he is paying homage to the Victorian serialised novel, but it does leave the reader somewhat frustrated.