New Book Alert: A Prison in the Sun: A Fuerteventura Mystery (Canary Islands Mysteries Book 3) by Isobel Blackthorn; Journey of Mystery and Self-Discovery Lead To Dark Story of Imprisonment During Franco's Spain

New Book Alert: A Prison in the Sun: A Fuerteventura Mystery ( Canary Islands Mysteries Book 3) by Isobel Blackthorn; Journey of Mystery and Self-Discovery Lead To Dark Story of Imprisonment During Franco's Spain

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: It's always interesting when mysteries are set during the protagonist's vacation especially at a beautiful island resort. It's as though things would normally be peaceful and sleepy in this island. By contrast, a violent murder or robbery is conveniently waiting for the amateur detective du jour to show up on the scene to solve it.

In reality, the odds of such a thing happening are slim but make for exciting reading especially when the vacation spot shares a dark history that is waiting to be explored and shared by our vacationing hero. If the protagonist learns something about themselves, as well as the location's past and solving the mystery, then it's so much the better.

In Isobel Blackthorn's latest mystery, A Prison in the Sun, we get two such interesting stories in the beautiful setting of the Canary Islands. The first story is about Trevor Moore, a ghostwriter who is incredibly miserable. His marriage ended when his wife left him for another woman. He is estranged from his children. He is also in a rut in his career. He is tired of writing blog entries, reviews, and books and getting no credit for them especially when one of his clients is nominated for a literary award for a book that he wrote. His best friend/colleague basically strong arms him to travel to Tefla, Fuerteventura, and write an original work.


Trevor hopes that he can get away from his problems and achieve literary success on his own right. What he gets instead are a few mysteries and a chance to dissect his own love life and sexual identity.


Trevor goes exploring through his new locale and sees an abandoned windmill and a hostel. “The village has a terrible history,” says Luis, a local physical trainer. But he won't elaborate.

Doing some online and in-person research Trevor learns that the hostel was used as a prison/labor camp for gay men during Franco’s presidency.

The history of the hostel is horrible, yet interesting but Trevor is not convinced that he is the writer for it. Shouldn't such a dark local history be told by a local author or at least one who has a passing acquaintance with the Spanish language, Trevor asks. Not to mention an author that's gay? Which Trevor insists that he is not even though he lusts after Luis’s toned handsome body and remembers experimenting with a male classmate in school.


While he suffers from writer's block and tries to ignore his confused sexuality, Trevor goes for a long walk on the beach and finds a backpack filled with several items including fifty thousand euros in rolled up bills and more importantly for Trevor, a manuscript. Not only that, but news reports state that a body washed up onshore. No points in guessing whether the body and rucksack are related.


Besides Trevor's story, we receive another interesting story, the one in the manuscript. That of José Ramos. José is a man living in Franco's Spain who tells of his estrangement from his family because of his sexuality and imprisonment for staring too long at another man. José is arrested, found guilty, disgraced, and sent to Tefla's labor camp.

At Tefla, José is forced to do hard manual labor with several other prisoners. He writes about them, particularly Manuel, a former prostitute turned lover to José.

As with many books which involve a historical and modern story, José and Trevor's stories converge commenting on one another as the modern Trevor learns from the historical José.

The mystery is mostly slight as Trevor continuously makes several errors such as trusting the wrong people and blurting out the wrong things at the most inopportune time. He is constantly on the run from drug dealers and gangsters that he envisions want the money in the rucksack. He also isn't particularly honest himself. He considers keeping the money even after he encounters the dead man's next of kin.

However, where the mystery is not as compelling, it's the change in Trevor's character that is the strongest aspect to this book.

Trevor starts out as a sad sack of a man given to cynical barbs out of his life, work, and current situation. When one of his clients wants him to write a tone-deaf and racially insensitive book about an indigenous Australian man, he sighs with relief that no matter how bad the book is, at least his name won't appear on the title page. “Being a ghost has some advantages,” Trevor says.

Trevor is the archetypal middle-aged man going through a mid-life crisis. He spends most of the book bemoaning his failed marriage, flaccid appearance, and dead-end job. It takes this trip to make him look at his life differently and seek to improve it. He signs up for a gym membership and works to develop his body. While he debates whether or not he is gay, he opens his mind up to the possibility accepting his erotic fantasies and romantic thoughts towards men, particularly Luis and his former schoolmate.

When he peers at José's story, Trevor shows real creative talent by translating and editing the manuscript. When he reads the opening of José telling his story to a bird, Trevor reinserts the bird in a few key moments understanding José's need to tell his story to someone, anyone, and uses the bird as a metaphor for José's wanting to fly free from a bigoted world.


Most importantly, Trevor learns to accept himself. When he reads about José and the other men, he learns about the consequences that they had to suffer for their sexuality. They faced imprisonment and torture. After their release, they were unemployed, isolated, and fell into alcoholism, drug addiction, prostitution, and depression. They were declared pariahs in Franco's Spain which held rigid beliefs about what men should be and they did not include sleeping with other men. However, José did not deny who he was considering his love for other men to be as natural as any other love.


Trevor learns how to live with himself and his own desires. If José and the others can be honest with themselves while surrounded by imprisonment, ostracism, and possible death then so can he.

While Trevor continues making plenty of mistakes concerning the rucksack, he considers working on José's story to be his own atonement and legacy.

Ironically, reading and working on about José's life and imprisonment, gives Trevor the chance to free himself from his emotional prison.