If you're a published writer, you'll snicker and wink in complicity all the way to the end of the book, which is a more engrossing and ebullient read in its original Spanish edition, El juego del ángel. Part of the joy of reading Zafón is his way with Spanish, and although Lucia Graves translates him with grace and a hefty vocabulary, The Angel's Game doesn't feel as accomplished as The Shadow of the Wind, which Graves also translated.

Perhaps the culprit is the story itself and its darker-than-dark nature after Martín becomes stranger than strange and a suspect in a string of murders.

Nonetheless, the enemy in The Angel's Game remains essentially the same as in The Shadow -- the people and forces that conspire against books and reading -- but there's no sympathetic, innocent and ultimately heroic boy like 11-year-old Daniel to propel the pathos, no admirable bookseller. Only a writer -- villain or hero? Only Barcelona.

After reading Zafón's vivid descriptions, you'll want to hop on a plane and roam the Catalonian city's famous tree-lined ramblas, the narrow streets where one unexpectedly runs into a used bookstore with crammed shelves, an old cat in residence and an attendant husband and wife who complete the picture of Zafón's fictional Semper & Son. And who won't think that the strange mansion where Martín holes up to write is one of the deliriously conceived houses designed by the maverick architect Gaudí?

At the end, the city makes the writer, and Zafón once more creates a tale -- a Harry Potter for grown-ups, a mammoth parable, an operatic morality play -- worthy of Barcelona. For Zafón, there's not only glory in the almighty byline but also sheer joy in the process of wielding the pen.

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