If isn't about grave, then it is about heaven. Now then I realized. These are exactly the two titles I have finished lately with the 'skyward' one a week ago, while the drop back to earth barely an hour shy of midnight.
Standing In Another Man's Grave by Ian Rankin is about retired cop John Rebus' return to the force to investigate the disappearances of four women from the same road over ten years. As stubborn and anarchic as ever, he quickly finds himself in deep with pretty much everyone. In the end, he does uncover the truth, unavoidably bending a few rules thou.
Bits from the book :
Rain wasn't quite falling yet, but it had scheduled an appointment.
'Rankled?'
'As in : pissed me off. Royally pissed me off And made me that bit more determined it wasn't going to happen next time.'
My first book by Carlos Ruiz Zafon is his 2001 novel The Shadow of the Wind, which is definitely a good read. Didn't realize there are sequels till I saw The Prisoner of Heaven. Surely I am going to find his first sequel The Angel's Game that I'd missed.
The Shadow of the Wind
The novel, set in post–war Barcelona, concerns a young boy, Daniel Sempere. Just after the war, Daniel's father takes him to the secret Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a huge library of old, forgotten titles lovingly preserved by a select few initiates. According to tradition, everyone initiated to this secret place is allowed to take one book from it and must protect it for life. Daniel selects a book called The Shadow of the Wind by Julián Carax. That night he takes the book home and reads it, completely engrossed. Daniel then attempts to look for other books by this unknown author but can find none. All he comes across are stories of a strange man – calling himself Laín Coubert, after a character in the book who happens to be the Devil – who has been seeking out Carax's books for decades, buying them all and burning them. It is actually a story within a story.
The Prisoner of Heaven
Barcelona, 1957. It is the week before Christmas in the Sempere & Sons bookshop...a mysterious figure with a pronounced limp enters the shop...
Also stories with stories, but the real narrative here is Daniel Sempere's best friend and bookstore employee, the irrepressible Fermin Romero de Torres. Flashing back to 1939, Fermin tells Daniel about his imprisonment during the war. Only that this round it doesn't really have much to do with the mysterious qualities of The Cemetery of Forgotten Books ..... But I still like it and anticipating the fourth and may be the last sequel to sum it all.
This bit is interestingly true :
It is a scientifically acknowledged fact that any infant a few months old has an unerring instinct for sensing the exact moment in the early hours when his parents have managed to nod off, so he can raise the tone of his cries, thereby ensuring they don't get more than thirty minutes' sleep at a time.
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