Though No. 1 in Spain, I feel we have read so many themes of angels of the darkness that this is just one more. However, the characters are fascinating, the plot knotted and tight, and there undulates over the entire book a shadow of threat and fright.

Influenced by neighbor Gaudi's fantastic castle in Barcelona, Zafon enlarges and personifies the imaginations of living gargoyles, gossamer threads weaving snares to entrap and consume the gullible young journalist David Martin. Driven, however, toward his goal of publication, young Martin is deaf to all rationale and leaps into his dreams, mingling his convictions with those of freakish creations, a mad artist with unblinking eyes - the angel? - canine smiles and with hypnotic control over his prey.

Nothing is as it seems. Even the two loves of David's life seem impotent to awaken him from his paranoia of grandiose pursuits into oblique darkness of soul and of spirit.