The Prisoner
of Heaven (2012)
By Carlos Ruiz
Zafón
Harper
Perennial, 273 pages.
★★★
If there were an
Ambiguity Index in which 0 meant “I can’t abide the very hint of ambiguity” and
100 is “I see no reason whatsoever to engage in explanation,” where would you
reside? If you are anywhere in the 0-50 range, you will probably be very
satisfied with The Prisoner of Heaven, Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s concluding book
of his The Shadow of the Wind
trilogy. Lots of loose ends
are tied up. We find out about Fermín’s life before he showed up at the Sempere
bookshop and why David Martín was haunted. We also discover the nature and
identity of Martín’s tormentor.
These things make
sense of mysterious things in books one and two, but the vital question is
whether or not one wishes to know these things. Is it perhaps more fun
and more intriguing intellectually to speculate than to know? I’d read anything
that includes the delightfully roguish Fermín Romero de Torres, but I come down
on the side of wanting to keep enough hidden under the covers to make him at
least partly inexplicable. Ditto David Martín.
Luckily there is
enough intrigue in The Prisoner of Heaven to keep one entertained. Fermín
and Daniel Sempere are off on another caper, one that could put Daniel in
harm’s way. This one takes place on the eve of Fermín’s wedding to Bernarda and
threatens to sandbag the nuptials. A stranger enters the bookstore and
purchases the shop’s most expensive volume, one kept under glass. He also
leaves a chilling message for Fermín. Once again, we are thrust back to the
dangerous early days of Franco’s dictatorship; again, we learn that some things
are never completely over, especially when we assume that they are. We pay
another visit to the mysterious Cemetery of Forgotten Books and again learn
that those who appear to be the most dangerous aren’t the ones you should most
dread.
All of this is well
and good, but at heart The Prisoner of Heaven is a beat-the-clock caper
book. This puts it into the category of being an exhilarating read, but lacking
the literary excellence of The Shadow of the Wind or the spine-tingling
creepiness of The Angel’s Game. Fermín and Daniel are decidedly take
offs on Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, so there’s plenty of irreverence, mayhem,
and unorthodox adventure when they get together. One can also count on Fermín
for ribald and snarky remarks, and like the previous two novels it’s up for
grabs just who the namesake Prisoner of Heaven might be.
For all of that,
the concluding novel is simply too neat and too conventional for my blood. I
guess my Ambiguity Quotient rests in the 90th percentile.
Rob Weir
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