Prisoner of Heaven Reveals Triology Mysteries (but should it?)

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 90^th percentile.

Rob Weir

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