Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Angel's Game

I was on my way to Spain (lovely photos available here), and in need of a novel for the trip.  I had been saving Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Angel's Game for just such an occasion, since it is set in Spain. Barcelona, 1920s.  An abandoned mansion.  A mysterious stranger.  A poor young man, struggling to make his way in the world and to win the love of a beauty, and then struggling against what may be his growing madness.

The first 10 or 20 pages are glossed with a nostalgic tone that is deadly for a novel, blunting all the edges and softening all the blows.  But this fades rapidly, and leaves in its place a dark, gaping hole that grows and grows as the novel progresses.  The Angel's Game is filled with all the stock elements of a gothic tale -- a lonely writer laboring under the press of madness and in the grip of alcohol, frail and beautiful women, decaying mansions and cemeteries, and nights obliterated by powerful rainstorms.  The plot becomes increasingly compelling, and characters more compelling and sympathetic, and the prose more ornate as the novel progresses.  The narrator draws us along, as inflames us with his desperation:

"Please," I murmured, fighting back the tears, a defeated man pitifully begging a God in whom he had never trusted. I looked around at that holy site filled with nothing but ruins and ashes, emptiness and loneliness and knew that I would go back to fetch her that very night, with no more miracle or blessing than my own determination to tear her away from the clutches of that timid, infatuated doctor who had decided to turn her into his own Sleeping Beauty. I would set fire to the sanatorium rather than allow anyone to touch her again. I would take her home and die by her side.  Hatred and anger would light my way.

Sink into this dark tale, lose yourself in its twists, and listen for the drip of the water along the rotten plaster, that will draw your attention to the secret door behind the wardrobe, the source of the foul stench that has been slowly spreading through the old house and out to the slums crumbing around it.