The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair by Joël Dicker
Thirty-three years after she disappears, the body of Nola Kellergan is unearthed in a garden bed and the case into her murder opens. When novelist-wunderkind Marcus Goldman launches a private investigation into the Nola Kellergan affair, he becomes the target of increasingly dramatic threats.
Joël Dicker’s second novel The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair is a twisty literary murder mystery set in small-town America. The narrative presents multiple points of view and comprises manuscripts excerpts, letters, diary entries, interviews, transcripts, fantasy, and red herrings galore as well as Marcus’s account of the whole.
With two authors as central characters, this is also a novel about book production, agents and editors, contractual obligations, marketing and publicity, the creative process, and writing discipline. Harry Quebert’s 31 tips on novel-writing and the writing mindset steer the reader through the 600-page whopper.
“The first chapter, Marcus, is essential. If the readers don’t like it, they won’t read the rest of your book. How do you plan to begin yours?”
Curiously, perhaps hilariously, despite being presented as two of the greatest contemporary American writers, the love letters and writing excerpts of Quebert and Goldman are trashy - it is Swiss author Joël Dicker’s prose which stands out as confident, wily, and well-engineered.
Talking of standouts: Marcus’s investigation is interrupted several times by phone calls from his mother haranguing him to get a nice, punctual girlfriend; she reminded me of Aunt Gladys in Philip Roth’s debut novel Goodbye, Columbus. I also enjoyed Tamara Quinn’s dreadful henpecking of her husband.
*
WHAT TO READ NEXT
The Invisible Guardian by Dolores Redondo - a misty, moody murder in northern Spain
The Tunnel by Ernesto Sábato - a dark, brilliant account of a murderer’s unspooling logic
