The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair — Joël Dicker
“Somerset Police. What’s your emergency?”
“Hello? My name is Deborah Cooper. I live on Side Creek Lane. I think I’ve just seen a man running after a girl in the woods”
“Could you tell me exactly what happened, ma’am?”
“I don’t know! I was standing by the window. I looked over toward the woods, and I saw this girl running through the trees. There was a man behind her. I think she was trying to get away from him.”
Joel Dicker is a French writer, whose suspenseful crime novel The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair is a hit among youth, having sold more than two million copies across Europe. This book revolves around Marcus Goldman, a bestselling novelist of his first and only book, who is in the advent of absorbing his new-found fame in the world of avid readers. However, this merry will be short-lived, as his publisher is keen on Marcus sticking to his contract of writing one more book by the end of the year. Only Marcus is at a loss of ideas, stricken in the classic tale of a writer’s block.
At first shrugging off, this state of thoughtlessness as a mere transient phase, Marcus recognizes eventually the urgent need to seek something or someone who will extricate him from this pitfall, calling on reflex his long dear mentor, a fellow successful writer, a retired veteran, Harry Quebert. Through Marcus’ personal rendezvous, and short stay at his friend’s house, he soon encounters a poignant past that Harry among the few people in the town is privy to. In the very year Harry came to Somerset, with the hope of writing his first novel, a beautiful teenaged girl, Nola Kellergan, went missing under mysterious circumstances. Years ago, when Harry came to Somerset, New Hampshire, as a struggling writer, he fell in love that summer with the ever-so radiant fifteen-year-old Nola. And right when Harry finished with his book, the masterpiece which in the following years would bring him glory, Nola went missing, disappeared from her room on the very night a woman reported a girl being chased to the woods. Would it have been Nola?
In the weeks that follow Marcus’ stay, in a digging behind Harry’s courtyard the townsmen find the remains of what is later verified as Nola Kellergan’s. Did Harry kill the only girl he loved? Is there more to the case than a deranged lover, a scandalous affair gone awry?
The approach of this sleuth novel is unique and singular. The tightening proceedings of the murder case is written parallel to the first novel that Marcus Goldman wrote, keeping the novel thrilling till the very end with multiple plotlines coexisting. It is daintily crafted, especially in helpings of the love that Harry and Nola shared, the individual secrets that residents of the town have hidden over the years, and the lies that have been repeated enough to replace the truths.
Contrary to thrillers and detective novels in general, this novel is a different approach to telling a deeply compelling story, the fault lines in investigations, the finer qualities of observation and memory.
