Having learned that his mother was murdered by the evil warden Mauricio Valls after she threatened to expose his forcing imprisoned authors to ghost-write texts for him, young bookseller Daniel Sempere has been trying to locate him, consumed by a desire for revenge. The main action is driven, however, by yet another old memory from his mentor Fermín's ever-changing past: Alicia Gris, an reluctant operative for the Franocist police, whose life he saved during a bombing raid when she was a child. Coincidentally, Gris has been assigned to track down the missing Valls, who's disappeared after receiving a series of disturbing letters from David Martin, the presumed dead author who was Valls' primary victim and whose life Daniel's mother was trying to save. Alicia soon discovers a much darker story, related to the mysterious banker Ignacio Sanchís and a variety of sinister characters tangled up in a dark conspiracy that goes back to the final days of the Spanish Civil War.
Some short stories, either directly or indirectly set on the same universe, were published in a compillation named The City of Vapor, released after Zafón's death in 2020.
This work contains examples of:
- Action Girl: Alicia's very reputation in the secret police, and the reason she's so highly valued as an asset. Before the book is over, she's disfigured an attempted rapist, shot and killed multiple guys, and killed a man by jamming a pen through his eye and pushing him off a ledge.
- To a lesser extent Ariadna, who facilitates the kidnapping and torture of Valls, then escapes her would-be murderer by jamming a hypodermic needle full of poison into his throat.
- Affably Evil: Leandro, a kindly, avuncular figure who treats his proteges as his children, and who in contrast to his more brutal colleagues performs his interrogations over tea in a luxury hotel (albeit with a low dose of heroin to loosen his subjects' lips). None of that prevents him from having had dozens of families murdered so their children could be sold to Franco sympathizers, or orchestrating a series of further murders to help cover up his past crimes.
- The Alcoholic: Since this is late-50s and early-60s Spain and massive alcohol consumption was just an accepted part of the culture, quite a few characters are functioning alcoholics. Vargas is mindful of his intake after killing his family in a drunk driving accident but still has brandy in his coffee, while Alicia readily admits that she self-medicates for both pain and PTSD with booze and is chugging white wine in virtually every scene she's in. Meanwhile, Fermin travels everywhere with a flask of what's essentially moonshine and drinks champagne for breakfast.
- All Gays Are Pedophiles: Excluding the Ambiguously Bi Alicia, who doesn't make it much better given that she has predatory fantasies for Bea, Virgilio is the only character openly stated to be gay, and a couple of his lines imply he is also an ephebophile.
- All There in the Manual: Although the preface claims that the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series can be read in any order, this book never explains the significance of Julian Carax, whose backstory is featured prominently in The Shadow of the Wind. Readers who aren't already familiar with that book will be utterly baffled as to why Daniel named his son after him, why Carax is horribly disfigured, and why he spends all of his time hanging around Nuria Montfort's grave.
- Ambiguously Bi: Alicia has some Ship Tease with Vargas, Daniel, and Fernandito, but also imagines herself forcefully kissing Bea, and ruminates on her beauty and desirability often throughout the novel.
- Ambiguously Evil: It's never 100% clear if Leandro is telling Alicia the truth when he claims he hired Rovira strictly to tail her, or if Rovira was working on Leandro's orders when he tried to kill her. On the one hand, Leandro does call Rovira to ask if Alicia is dead; on the other hand, Leandro is shown to generally use more low-profile methods to kill "inconvenient" people, such as Ariadna's attempted poisoning and Lomana's murder, both of which are carried out by professional functionaries and not total psychos like Rovira. His Suicide by Cop at Alicia's hands likewise can be interpreted either as a show of remorse for actual guilt, or simply a way to hasten his death rather than be exposed for his past crimes.
- Ambiguous Situation: A few:
- Was David Martin just a paranoid schizophrenic, or did he really make a deal with a demon named Andreas Corelli? Other characters maintain that Martin was simply mentally ill, but, if that's the case, how did one physically frail man who'd been tortured and malnourished for months overpower and kill Valls' henchmen and escape the country?
- Why does Leandro goad Alicia into killing him? Is it because all of his allies are dead and he's afraid of being the one man to go down for the scheme he concocted with Valls? Because Alicia refuses to ally with him to help build a "New Spain"? Because he feels guilty about setting her up to get killed by Rovira? Or some combination of the above?
- And I Must Scream: Valls by the end of the book. Over the course of the story, he's shot, has his hand first mutilated and then amputated, contracts gangrene and blood poisoning, and is slowly being starved to death by his captors. By the time Hendaya finds him, Valls is so far gone that he agrees to provide the police information in exchange not for freedom but for death. Still weeks later when Daniel finds him, most of his teeth are gone, his gums are bleeding from malnutrition and Daniel likes him to a living sack of bones. When Valls realizes Daniel is holding a gun he gets excited at the prospect of death and enters a state of panic when he realizes Daniel has decided not to kill him.
- Artistic License – Biology: Julian Carax is described as having a full beard in old age, despite his entire face and body being covered in third degree burns. Third degree burns destroy the layer of skin that contains hair follicles, so there's no way he could have facial hair.
- Artistic License – History: In-universe for comedic effect. Fermín claims the inventor of the submarine was a guy named Isaac Monturiol, which effectively conflates two real life developers of Spanish submarines, Isaac Peral and Narciso Monturiol
. - Author Appeal: As in past books, Zafon's love of literature is passed on to his positive characters, while evil characters are contemptuous of the written word. Valls is said to have no actual talent, the reason he imprisoned and forced more skilled authors to ghost write books for him. Hendaya, meanwhile, holds to the Franco regime's stance on censorship, and once he learns about the Cemetery of Forgotten books plans to burn it down. Alicia, meanwhile, despite her position in the secret police, is shown to be redeemable through her love of books and dreams of possibly writing herself one day.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Leandro Montalvo and Mauricio Valls, who during the war orchestrated a campaign of mass-murder, killing entire families in order to "gift" their children to high-ranking Franco supporters.
- Bittersweet Ending: For this book and the entire Cemetery of Forgotten Books series. Alicia kills everyone involved in the child trafficking plot and sends evidence of it to a prominent Spanish journalist, who exposes the government for its complicity. She gets to go to America and spends the rest of her life traveling the country, but dies in her early sixties of a terminal disease. Ariadna and Victoria Mataix finally reunite, but their loved ones have all been murdered, and rather than live with the memories of the sexual and psychological abuse they survived, they opt to commit suicide together. The Sempere family survives a possible attempt on their lives and Daniel sees justice done to the man who killed his mother, but his all-consuming hatred for Valls has deteriorated his relationship with his family. Even though he and Bea agree to have another child, the marriage remains strained, and rather than grow up to become the successful novelist the character dreamed of being in the previous two books, he instead ages into a bitter, neurotic man obsessed with his dead mother's memory. Julian Sempere finally gets to meet his namesake, Julian Carax, who helps him write his family's story, but Carax himself is a broken shell of a man who's stopped writing again after only publishing one new novel. He now spends most of his time hanging around Nuria Montfort's grave out of guilt for his role in her death, and eventually dies of a heart attack there. In the final scenes, an adult Julian Sempere visits Fermin, whom it's implied is close to death, and the pair ruminate that while the 1992 Barcelona Olympics are a high-water mark for the city, the radical change to its culture as a result of the event means the place they loved no longer exists.
- Body Horror: Quite a bit, for a mass-marketed mystery novel.
- Morgado is horribly disfigured to the point he has to wear a prosthetic mask to cover half of his face. It Gets Worse when Hendaya tortures him by blowing out both of his kneecaps at point-blank range before shooting him in the head.
- At the outset of the story, Valls' wife has been dying for years of some sort of degenerative illness implied to be multiple sclerosis or possibly early-onset Parkinson's Disease, which has left her bedridden and gruesomely deteriorating. By the time Ariadna finds her, she's little more than a breathing skeleton. The narration implies that it's a mercy when Ariadna suffocates her.
- Alicia has a gruesome wound as the result of surviving the war, which is described as a thick black mass of veins and lesions covering her entire hip. The debilitating pain it causes her is a major plot point, and Rovira fixates on it while torturing her after she finds his shrine to her.
- After she's captured, Alicia escapes Rovira by shooting him in the face at point-blank-range, blowing off a chunk of it but leaving him alive for a while before she finally kills him by shooting him in the torso.
- Alicia finally kills Hendaya by jamming a pen through his eye into his brain and pushing him off a ledge. She later retrieves her pen by yanking it out of the pulped-up mess of his head.
- A major focus of the scenes involving Valls, who's being slowly tortured to death for his role in mass-murdering families so their children could be "gifted" to high ranking politicians. His hand is pulverized and allowed to begin rotting before gangrene sets in, at which point his jailers finally "save" him by performing a gruesome amputation without anesthetic that concludes with them soaking the stump in hot tar. From there, Valls spends much of the book being made to wallow in his own filth while progressively starving to death as a result of the poor-quality food and rancid water he's being fed by his captors. By the end of the book, Valls' physical state has become so inhuman that he begins trying to negotiate his own execution.
- Bookends: For the entire Cemetery series. The very first entry, Shadow of the Wind, begins with Juan Sempere taking a young Daniel to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. This one ends with Daniel's adult son, Julian, taking his daughter to the Cemetery.
- The story itself has internal bookends as well. One of the opening scenes of Labyrinth is a flashback to Fermin and a young Alicia Gris running through the streets of Barcelona during a bombing raid. The book ends with another adult male/young girl combination, Julian and Alicia Sempere, walking peacefully through the streets of Barcelona while fireworks go off.
- Brother–Sister Incest: Zig-zagged. Ignacio Sanchís and Victoria Ubach seem to be half-siblings when it is implied Sanchís is Miguel Ángel Ubach's bastard son, but it then turns out that Victoria is actually Ariadna Mataix.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: As in previous books,Fermín is a eccentric Motor Mouth prone to long, rambling pontifications on his religious and political beliefs, women he finds sexually attractive, drink recipes, or food he wants to eat. He's also a trained ex-spy who slips back into professional mode when the going gets tough.
- The Chessmaster: Leandro, who immediately figures out who took Valls and why, and sets about a complex web of manipulations in an effort to get all of his enemies to kill one another.
- Chivalrous Pervert: Fermin. Though he's faithful to his wife and loyal to the Sempere family, about 1/3 of everything he says involves women he finds attractive and movie stars he would sleep with given the chance. It's such an issue that Daniel warns him not to discuss movies with his son because he knows what direction the conversation will go.
- Continuity Drift: Fermín's past is revisited and rewritten for a second time in the tetralogy. Now, he's haunted by what he thinks is his failure to have saved Alicia during a bombing raid, with the revelation that she survived being a major plot point. However, she's never mentioned in any of the previous books, and the bombing raid would've happened immediately prior to Fermín's appearance in The Prisoner of Heaven.
- Near the beginning of the book, Fermín worries about his ability to use a rifle because he's never fired a gun before. However, in The Shadow of the Wind, we learn he was recruited into spy work out of the army, where one of the basic skills is learning how to fire a weapon.
- Cryptic Background Reference: Ladislao Bayona and Enrique Marqués are casually mentioned as two of the other great genre writers of Martin's generation and Bayona is indicated to have been a close friend of his. They're never mentioned again and no further detail is given about their lives or fates.
- Dies Wide Open: Valls, who perishes of malnutrition on public transportation hours after being freed. It provides convenient nourishment for a pair of crows who immediately set to work on his corpse after it's dumped in a mass grave.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: After having been one of the main characters for the first half of the book, Vargas is unceremoniously murdered by a minor character who's only been revealed to be a villain a few scenes earlier, and who himself dies within pages.
- The Dragon: Hendaya to Leandro. In classic fashion, Hendaya serves as the more aggressive, physically threatening muscle, while Leandro puts on the front of a calm, trustworthy, avuncular figure.
- Driven to Suicide: What ultimately happens to Leandro. Once all of his allies are dead and Alicia refuses to help him cover up any more of his crimes, he goads her into shooting him.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Alicia Gris just wants to get out of the Secret Police and live a quiet life away from the machinations of the Francoist government. On her final assignment, she uncovers a massive government conspiracy that itself uncovers a shadow war in the Franco government that itself uncovers a murder plot. By the end of the book, she's personally killed most of the people involved. The last we see of her she's boarding a cruise ship for America. In the final portion of the book, Fermin confirms to Julian Sempere she died peacefully in America after thirty years of traveling the country.
- End of an Age: A theme of the book.
- Invoked by Leandro regarding Spain in the 1960s. The book is set during a period when Franco's regime was loosening its totalitarian control of Spain in an effort to have better relations with its European neighbors as well as the United States. Leandro even admits that ruthless torturers and murderers like Hendaya and Valls will have no place in the coming Spain, whereas conscience-driven individuals like Alicia will be in higher demand.
- Zig-zagged by Fermin upon the death of Franco. Seeing the world as an inherently corrupt place, Fermin tells Julian that nothing will really change, only the people running the country, who will probably be as corrupt as Franco but in different ways.
- Invoked by an adult Julian Sempere, who believes that the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona are the last great thing the city will achieve. Somewhat of a case of Real Life Writes the Plot, as the culture of the city did radically change as a result of the rapid urban renewal that occurred to prepare for the event, and the world depicted in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series no longer exists.
- Ensemble Cast: Zafon's biggest since The Shadow of the Wind and the largest in any of his works. Daniel, Fermin, Alicia, Fernandito, and Vargas are all primary protagonists, and even Isabella takes over as narrator for a chunk of the book after Fermin receives her diary. Meanwhile, Valls, Hendaya, and Leandro serve as the primary antagonists. Then there's the barrage of supporting characters in the form of Juan Sempere, Bea, Victoria, Rovira, Fernandito's aunt, and the list goes on...
- Evil Versus Evil: Since several characters are either corrupt politicians or members of Franco's secret police, a few cases arise.
- Sanchís is attempting to get revenge on Valls for murdering entire families during the war to give their children to high-profile infertile couples in the Franco regime, but Sanchís himself is a Morally Bankrupt Banker who cons elderly people out of their homes. Somewhat subverted in that Sanchis is acting out of love for the innocent Ariadna, whose father was murdered so that she and her sister could be adopted out.
- Hendaya and Valls. The former is a corrupt cop who thinks nothing of resorting to torture and murder to get what he wants, the latter is a former prison warden who arranged for innocent men to be imprisoned so Valls could force them to ghost write books for him. Valls takes it even further by orchestrating a plot of mass-murder targeting families with children of an adoptable age so that their kids can be gifted or sold to high-ranking politicians.
- Eye Scream: Hendaya's fate. While stalking Alicia through the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, she ambushes him with the antique pen Isaac gifted to her and jams it through his eye into his brain. He's still alive and convulsing when she pushes him off a ledge to his death, adding a further element of squick when she goes back downstairs to yank her pen out of his pulverized skull.
- Fate Worse than Death: Valls considers his circumstances to be this. At two points he tries to convince people to kill him rather than free him.
- Faux Affably Evil: In his first appearance, Hendaya is likened in manner and appearance to a Hollywood movie star. Once he starts talking about hooking up jumper cables to guys' balls, it becomes apparent what his real personality is.
- Femme Fatale: Alicia is a sultry female detective who often dresses all in black and wears intentionally provocative bright-red lipstick.
- For the Evulz: Rovira's entire motivation. Working for the secret police is just a convenient cover to allow him to indulge in his hobby of stalking, murder, and sexual assault, all built around a rich and disturbing fantasy life in which he's an omnipotent force called The Observer.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Both Mauricio Valls and Leandro are described as having a scholarly, bookish appearance due to their glasses. Both men orchestrated the mass murders of dozens of families so their children could be sold to high-ranking government officials, and Valls spent a large portion of his life as the warden of a political prison where he sadistically tortured inmates to vent his own frustrations at not having been given more power in the Franco regime.
- Good Counterpart: Valentín Morgado seems to be this to Vicent Carmona, as they serve Sanchís and Valls respectively, but it turns out Sanchís is not fully clean either.
- Hell Hotel: The hotel where Alicia is living at the beginning of the book. In one of Zafon's trademark casual insertions of the supernatural into an otherwise grounded book, it's implied several of the tenants are ghosts. Even the desk clerk with whom Alicia is friends may be dead.
- Heel–Face Turn: After learning that his wife was kidnapped from her family as a child and both of her parents were killed by the State so she could be sold to Franco supports, Sanchís pumps the breaks on his evil activities and dedicates all his time and money into helping her get justice.
- Humiliation Conga: Valls' entire plot in the book. He's shot, tortured, mutilated, and starved, and spends much of the latter half of the book wallowing in his own excrement. He's endured so much that by the time Daniel finally finds him, he considers him already dead and refuses to kill him. As a final insult, after he dies of malnutrition hours after being freed, his anonymous corpse is thrown into a mass grave where birds peck out his eyes.
- Let Me Get This Straight...: Near the end of the book, multiple chapters are dedicated to Leandro interrogating Victoria Ubach/Ariadna Mataix, which serves the purpose of conclusively outlining the book's numerous convoluted subplots and intersecting conspiracies. Some of the material covered was even explained just a few chapters before, but gets repeated so the reader understands the entire scope of the book's multiple, decades-spanning plot threads.
- May–December Romance: There's some degree of subtext between Alicia and Vargas, even although the latter is old enough that his dead daughter was born the same year as Alicia. Some Like Parent, Like Spouse might be on play for Alicia's part, as Vargas has coincidentally the same first name as her father (although not the second).
- Meaningful Name: Rodrigo Hendaya, the stylish Francoist inspector. His first name evokes El Cid Campeador, a historical figure Francoists loved to glorify (and subject to heavy revisionism in the process), while his surname references the Meeting at Hendaye between Francisco Franco and Adolf Hitler.
- Morally Bankrupt Banker: Multiple cases, the main being Miguel Ángel Ubach, Enrique Sarmiento, and Ignacio Sanchís. Subverted by Sanchís' Heel–Face Turn.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed:
- Sergio Vilajuana is obviously a fictional version of Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, a real life journalist and writer whom Zafón was a friend of.
- Juan Manuel Vargas is trickier because he doesn't resemble much the real person, but his name and role in the story sound too much like a reference to José Manuel Villarejo, a former Francoist police detective turned private eye whose famous trial for political troubleshooting was still ongoing when the novel was released.
- No Historical Figures Were Harmed: As seen in their very names, Miguel Ángel Ubach is roughly in place of Juan March, a wealthy banker that funded the National side during the Civil War in real life (although March eventually stopped supporting Franco, something Ubach doesn't).
- No Name Given:
- Subverted. Daniel's father had gone unnamed for all the three previous books, but here he's revealed to be named Juan.
- Played straight with the elderly jailer keeping watch over Valls. The one part of the book told from his point of view tells us that the name everyone else keep calling him is wrong, but that he's happy with that since he's afraid of them and just doing this for money. He gives Daniel a completely different name later with no indication that's his true identity either.
- Obvious Villain, Secret Villain: The reader knows from his first appearance that Hendaya is a psycho cop, and it comes as no surprise when Smug Snake Leandro turns out to be corrupt. However, Rovira seems like yet another inept tail like Fernandito, so that it comes as a surprise when he's revealed to be a serial killer called The Observer hired to help Leandro eliminate witnesses.
- Only One Name: Juan Manuel Vargas' first name is said exactly once in 805 pages. The rest of the time, he's either Vargas or Captain Vargas.
- Out of Focus: After narrating the opening chapters of the book, Daniel ceases to be a central character in the story and fades into the background for most of the novel. The narrative first switches perspectives to Fermin remembering the bombing raid on Barcelona that he and Alicia survived, and then new character Alicia Gris becomes the focal point of the rest of the book until the final fifty pages, when Julian Sempere abruptly becomes the narrator.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: A good chunk of the book is dedicated to scenes of Valls being tortured, with his tormentors being portrayed as the good guys. As Leandro points out to Alicia, the book takes place around the time the Franco regime was beginning to shift from being a brutal, totalitarian dictatorship to a more modernized, albeit corrupt Western European nation as part of an effort to improve relations with the United States. Valls- and to a lesser extent Leandro- act as stand-ins for all of the Francoists who participated in atrocities during the war, especially the Perdidos Ninos scheme. As such, he's subjected to the Humiliation Conga of being kidnapped, tortured, mutilated, and starved to the point he literally begs multiple characters to kill him. His ultimate fate is to die of malnutrition hours after being freed, and, since he has no identification and Leandro had earlier faked his death in a car crash, his anonymous corpse is tossed into the same mass grave where he buried political prisoners during his tenure as prison warden. On the other hand, Leandro gets off relatively easy via gunshot to the heart.
- Pet Rat: Rovira to Leandro. The former is directly on the latter's payroll as opposed to being an official agent of the secret police, so that he can commit even more brutal extrajudicial violence than even Franco's already notoriously corrupt agents will allow.
- Posthumous Character:
- David Martin. Early on it's confirmed that he died at some point between The Angel's Game and this book, but his imprisonment and torture are one of several factors motivating the revenge plot against Valls.
- Isabella Sempere, who's been dead since before the first entry in the series, gets to narrate a portion of the book from beyond the grave via a diary that pops up in the first 1/4 and is later read in its entirety by Daniel and Fermin.
- Ricardo Lomana, Alicia's missing former mentor and sexual harasser, turns out to have been murdered before the events of the book.
- The shadow of Francisco Javier Fumero still hangs over the story, as both Lomana and Hendaya are revealed to be his former apprentices. Fumero makes a brief cameo in a flashback near the beginning of the book, attempting to arrest Fermin upon his return to Barcelona during the war.
- The Power of Love: Sanchís is a morally bankrupt banker who cons old people out of money, but after falling in love with Victoria, he throws all of his time and money into helping her get justice for her and her family.
- Psycho for Hire: Rovira is a serial killer who calls himself The Observer with a room full of crazy dedicated to Alicia. He also rents out his services to the Secret Police to eliminate members of their own force they want eliminated without drawing attention to themselves.
- Psycho Lesbian: Probably bi rather than lesbian, but still. Alicia, whom we know to be at least a bit messed up, fantasizes with forcing herself on Bea.
- Put on a Bus: Bea's ex-boyfriend, the secondary antagonist of the The Prisoner of Heaven, is completely absent, and the reader never learns why Valls sent him to meet with her in the previous book.
- Remember the New Guy?:
- Víctor Mataix is said to have been among David Martín's closest friends (along with another character, Alfons Brósel, whom we never meet) and one of the other great niche writers of his time, and to have reunited with Martín in prison. Neither character appears or is even mentioned in either of the previous two books, both of which explore Martín's life in detail and one of which is an objective retelling of his prison time.
- Another entirely new character, Sergio Vilajuana, turns out to have been a close friend of the Sempere family who also knew Mataix and Martín.
- Juan Antonio Gris, Alicia's father, turns out to have been another close friend of Mr. Sempere and inhabitant of his neighborhood that had been never mentioned. Somewhat justified in that he died in the war prior to the events of the first book. Zig-zagged in that he was also Fermin's friend, Fermine saw him die, and the whole reason Fermin even came back to Barcelona was to notify his wife and Alicia of his death, but Fermin has never mentioned or thought about him once in three books.
- A major plot point of the book is the Heroic BSoD Fermin suffered in the bombing raid where both he and Alicia were injured, and ostensibly he's spent the last fifteen years haunted by the idea he failed to save her life. However, absolutely nothing about her (or her father, whom Fermin saw die) is mentioned in any versions of his past from the first three books of the tetralogy, even though his extended flashback in the third installment would've occurred immediately after losing Alicia.
- Resignations Not Accepted: Alicia's intended fate, depending on what version of Leandro's story we're meant to accept. If Rovira really was meant to kill her, it was because of her desire to leave the police force, which would've made her a potential liability because of her anti-Francoist leanings.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Valls' and Leandro's plot is based on the Niños Perdidos, children who were gifted or sold to high-ranking Franco officials in exchange for money or favors.
- Room Full of Crazy: Alicia discovers that Rovira has been keeping a shrine to her in the back of an abandoned mannequin factory in Barcelona, including photos of her dating back to her graduation from the police force, menus from restaurants she's eaten at, and even her undergarments.
- Rotating Protagonist: The book begins from Daniel's POV and then periodically switches heroes, with Fermin, Alicia, Vargas, Isabella Sempere and finally Julian Sempere sharing duties across their various storylines.
- Sequel Escalation: The first book in the series is an average-length mystery novel about a boy uncovering a doomed love triangle in his quest to learn more about a missing author. A few people die along the way, but no more so than an average detective novel. This book is over 800 pages long and has at least three primary characters with a cast of dozens of supporting characters and numerous intersecting plotlines involving multiple murder conspiracies, a shadow war within the Francoist secret police, and a body count (and attendant kills) worthy of a slasher movie.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The response of Valls' ambiguously named, elderly jailer when Daniel breaks into the prison. In the one scene told from his point of view he makes it clear he's only taken the assignment for much-needed retirement money and is the one person involved in the revenge/coverup with no personal or political connections. Once it becomes clear all of his paymasters are dead, he's more than happy to walk away and let things play themselves out.
- Suicide by Cop: Leandro's fate. Realizing all of his allies are dead and he faces exposure for his past crimes, he convinces Alicia that he's on the phone to the secret police ordering the Sempere family's murder. After she shoots him, she picks up the phone and realizes he never actually dialed a number.
- Together in Death: The fate of the Mataix sisters, who after finally being reunited agree they don't want to live with the memories of their parents' murders and the subsequent sexual abuse they suffered. Alicia finds them together in bed after peacefully overdosing on morphine.
- Took a Level in Badass: Fernandito starts the book as an idiot manchild who's spray painted his own name on a U.S. army helmet to fulfill his fantasies of being a Hollywood-style war hero. By the end of the book, he's tricked Hendaya into releasing him from police custody, successfully ditches the security detail sent to follow him, tracks Rovira to his lair after he kills Vargas and shoots him in the face, leaving him incapacitated for his later confrontation with Alicia, and succeeds in smuggling the evidence against Valls out of Alicia's place and getting it to Fermin. Other characters even remark on the rapid change in his character once the stakes are increased.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: While Zafon poked some gentle fun at Daniel in the previous book, he doubles down hard here in depicting him in line with how readers had grown to see the character: as an immature, inept manchild who relies on the older people in his life to get him out of trouble. Notably, he's verbally abusive to his wife, contemplates an affair, tells Fermin he'd rather avenge his mother's death than have a happy life with his family, and in one scene attempts to rape Bea. We also learn that he and Bea's "romantic" life consists of him getting her drunk on cheap wine and making her roleplay a model walking the runway, with the implication that it's a one-sided fetish of Daniel's as opposed to a mutually-enjoyable couple's activity.
- Unexplained Recovery: Near the end of the previous book, Daniel comments that his father is dying. At the start of this book he's perfectly fine and lives for several more years beyond the events of Prisoner of Heaven.
- War Is Hell: A major theme of the book. Moreso than the previous entries in the series, this book examines the legacy of the Spanish Civil War and its lingering impact on the city of Barcelona, with every major character other than Daniel, Bea, Hendaya, and Fernandito being survivors of the conflict. One of the first major set pieces is a bombing raid by Francoist forces that intentionally targets civilians, and both Fermin and Alicia are physically and mentally scarred by having survived it. Meanwhile, Valls and Leandro's campaign of mass-murder targeting families with "desirable" children is intended to profit from Franco's victory in the war. The book takes place at a time when Franco's totalitarian hold over Spain had begun to slip due to his regime's desire to improve relations with the United States and Western Europe, and the various reckonings that happen throughout the book reflect the country's reassessment of the war.
- What Does She See in Him?: Fermin invokes this to Daniel regarding Bea. As the book goes on and Daniel becomes more bitter, neurotic, and withdrawn, Fermin points out that he's becoming someone unworthy of her affection. Alicia has similar thoughts while fantasizing about Bea, although she also contemplates life with Daniel herself.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: A major subplot in the previous book, The Prisoner of Heaven, involved Valls sending one of his henchmen to arrange a clandestine meeting with Bea, and Daniel intercepting the invitation. That character is completely absent from this book and the plot is never referenced, despite the previous book's cliffhanger ending indicating it would be explored in this book.
- What the Hell, Hero?: As part of working himself up to murder Valls, Daniel attempts to rape his wife. Of course, Bea being Bea, she slaps the crap out of him instead.
- The Vamp: It's astonishing the number of men who are immediately attracted by Alicia, which she capitalizes on.
- Vorpal Pillow: How Ariadna Mataix kills Mrs. Valls for being complicit in her sister's abduction. By this point, Mrs. Valls has been slowly dying of a degenerative disease for so long it's almost a mercy killing.
