The Angel's Game

Barcelona, the 1920s. David Martín grew up in poverty with a violent father and few comforts beyond books, and now earns a living writing lurid serialized crime stories under a pseudonym for a cheap fiction publisher. Pedro Vidal, a wealthy fellow writer, has been his patron and friend; Vidal's chauffeur's daughter, Cristina, is the woman David cannot stop thinking about; and Isabella, a young admirer, turns up determined to learn the trade from him.

Worn down by overwork and a grim diagnosis, David moves into an abandoned tower house at the heart of the city and begins to suspect that something happened there. Then a reclusive French editor, Andreas Corelli, makes him an extraordinary offer: a very large sum to write a book that will change how people think and feel. As David works on the commission, he finds clues to the mysterious death of the house's previous owner, and the line between his manuscript and the shadows around him starts to blur.

The Angel's Game (El juego del ángel, 2008, translated by Lucia Graves) is a gothic mystery that returns to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and the Sempere & Sons bookshop. It is the second book in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series by publication, a prequel to The Shadow of the Wind that can be read on its own.