Joel Dicker's <i>The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair</i> sparked a bidding war.
Nicky Pellegrino finds novel's mad hype doesn't quite fulfil expectations.
Some novels slip into the world without much fuss and others are accompanied by a loud fanfare. The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair by Swiss writer Joel Dicker (Macmillan) belongs very much in the latter camp. It sparked a frantic bidding war, has sold more than two million copies,
won a couple of French awards and is being published in 40 or so countries.
That kind of hype brings high expectations. Thankfully, this 600-plus page book is a fabulous potboiler, dizzyingly twisty, amusingly satirical, and gripping from start to finish.
Our narrator, Marcus Goldman, is a young, one-hit wonder of a novelist who is suffering from a serious case of writer's block. In desperation, he leaves New York and goes to stay with his old mentor, Harry Quebert, who lives near the small New Hampshire town of Somerset. Harry is most famous for a bestseller called The Origin Of Evil that he wrote in 1975 and, with his publisher piling on the pressure, Marcus is hoping his influence will work some magic so he can produce a similar masterpiece. Things don't quite pan out that way.
A body is found in Harry's garden, buried with a manuscript of his iconic novel. It is identified as local girl Nola Kerrigan, who was 15 when she disappeared 1975, and Harry is arrested for her murder. Marcus is aware the pair had a love affair -- and a forbidden one at that, given Harry was in his 30s at the time. Things look pretty bad for him.
