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The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair: A Novel Paperback – May 27, 2014
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“Unimpeachably terrific.” —The New York Times Book Review
For fans of Ruth Ware, Shari Lapena, and Donna Tartt: a twisty, fast-paced, cinematic literary thriller, and an ingenious book within a book, by the #1 internationally bestselling author of The Enigma of Room 622
Marcus Goldman is riding high. The twenty-eight-year-old writer is the new darling of American letters, whose debut novel has sold two million copies. But when it comes time to produce a new book, he is sidelined by a crippling case of writer’s block. He travels to Somerset, New Hamprshire, to see his mentor, Harry Quebert, one of the country’s most respected writers, hoping to jar his creative juices as his publisher’s deadline looms. But Marcus’s plans are upended when Harry is sensationally implicated in a cold-case murder: Fifteen-year-old Nola Kellergan went missing in 1975, and Harry admits to having had an affair with her. Following a trail of clues through the backwoods and isolated beaches of New Hampshire, Marcus must answer two questions, which are mysteriously connected: Who killed Nola Kellergan? And how do you write a book to save someone’s life?
Translated from the French by Sam Taylor
Named a Best Book of the Summer by CBS This Morning, Us Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Parade, Houston Chronicle, New York Post, Tampa Bay Times, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and The Daily Beast
Now a 10-part TV series on EPIX, starring Patrick Dempsey, Ben Schnetzer, Damon Wayans Jr., and Virginia Madsen
- Print length656 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPenguin Books
- Publication dateMay 27, 2014
- Dimensions1.6 x 5.5 x 8.2 inches
- ISBN-109780143126683
- ISBN-13978-0143126683
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, May 2014: A successful young author suffering from writer’s block journeys to New Hampshire to visit his former professor. Shortly after he arrives, the bones of a girl are found buried in the professor’s backyard. Now the professor has been arrested for the murder of the girl--who disappeared in 1975 at the age of fifteen--and the author has an idea: he will write a book based on the case that will ultimately exonerate his professor and jumpstart his writing. Already a massive best seller in Europe (and translated into 32 languages), The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair arrives in North America amid such wild praise you might expect something groundbreaking. Instead, what you get is a wonderful, fun, and boisterous read, a book with an uncanny ability to both fascinate and amuse you. Twists and turns and oddball characters make this a rollicking bullet-train of a novel. --Chris Schluep
From Booklist
Review
“A playful, page-turning whodunit . . . If Norman Mailer had been accused of murder and Truman Capote had collaborated with Dominick Dunne on a tell-all about it, the result might have turned out something like this. Though I suspect this version may be funnier. . . . It’s [Dicker’s] light touch and engaging voice that make the writing so infectious.” —Chelsea Cain, The New York Times Book Review
“The great American crime novel . . . A breakneck thriller.” —Details
“A terrific read . . . Entertaining . . . Cleverly constructed . . . It’s compelling, challenging, sometimes even funny. The characters are finely drawn. . . . It keeps you, as they say of movies, ‘on the edge of your seat.’ ” —The Huffington Post
“A wonderful, fun, and boisterous read, a book with an uncanny ability to both fascinate and amuse you. Twists and turns and oddball characters make this a rollicking bullet-train of a novel.” —Amazon.com, Best Book of the Month
“I haven’t had a suspense novel surprise me like this one in a long time. Joël Dicker is a bright new star of suspense, and he proves his serious chops with this utterly thrilling, delightfully twisted, continually shocking novel. I can’t wait to read what he writes next!” —Lisa Gardner, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Fear Nothing
“A dazzling thriller—stunningly original and brilliantly plotted, down to the very last twists. It’s a murder mystery, a literary puzzle, and a love story, all ingeniously woven into a masterly novel of suspense. Joël Dicker is an enormous talent, and this book is extraordinary.” —Linda Fairstein, New York Times bestselling author of Death Angel
“Talk about a web of treason and danger: This one unfolds with a relentless sense of urgency and pulse-pounding escapades, entertaining at every turn. Absolutely rousing.” —Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author of The King’s Deception
“Planes, trains and automobiles: You’ll see people reading this book everywhere. An amazing debut and wonderful summer read.” —Michael Harvey, bestselling author of The Chicago Way
“Entertainingly pulled off . . . Enjoyable . . . It churns along at such a good clip and is rendered with such high emotion and apparent deep conviction that it’s easy to see why it was a bestseller in Europe.” —The Washington Post
“A highly entertaining mash-up of melodrama, metafiction and mystery [with] a slick page-turning plot.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Charmingly off-kilter . . . Sure-footed.” —The Daily Beast
“[A] funny, plot-twisting mystery.” —Women’s Day, “New Favorites from the Women’s Day Staff”
“Stunning . . . Fast-paced, tightly plotted . . . From page one, you’ll be hooked on this fascinating mystery of love and deception.” —National Examiner
“Smart and fun.” —Houston Chronicle
“A clever, tightly plotted thriller with a comic edge.” —Tampa Bay Times
“An ambitious, multilayered novel of suspense . . . This tale of fame, friendship, loyalty, and fiction versus reality moves at warp speed.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“This sprawling, likable whodunit [is] obvious ballast for the summer’s beach totes. . . . Dicker keeps the prose simple and the pace snappy in a plot that winds up with more twists than a Twizzler. . . . [An] entertaining debut thriller.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Tantalizing . . . Compelling . . . There is a Twin Peaks–like fascination to the story of Nola Kellergan. . . . Readers are certain to be caught up in the ongoing drama of who killed Nola among the plethora of suspects.” —Booklist
About the Author
Sam Taylor (translator) is a novelist and journalist who has lived in France for more than a decade. His first literary translation was Laurence Binet's HHhH, which was longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2014 by Joel Dicker
“Jesus, Marc, have you heard?”
“Heard what?”
“My God, turn on the T V! It’s about Harry Quebert! It’s Quebert!”
I put on the news. To my amazement I saw the house at Goose Cove on the screen and heard the presenter say: “It was here, in his home in Somerset, New Hampshire, that author Harry Quebert was arrested today after police discovered human remains on his property. Initial inquiries suggest this may be the body of Nola Kellergan, a local girl who at the age of fifteen disappeared from her house in August 1975 and has never been seen since.” The room began spinning around me, and I collapsed onto the couch in a daze. I couldn’t hear anything clearly anymore—not the TV, nor Douglas, at the other end of the line, bellowing, “Marcus? Are you there? Hello? He killed a girl? Quebert killed a girl?” In my head, everything blurred together like a bad dream.
So it was that I found out, at the same time as a stupefied America, what had happened a few hours earlier: That morning a landscaping company had arrived at Goose Cove, at Harry’s request, to plant hydrangea bushes. When they dug up the earth, the gardeners found human bones buried three feet deep and had immediately informed the police. A whole skeleton had quickly been uncovered, and Harry had been arrested.
On TV screen they cut between live broadcasts from Somerset and from Concord, sixty miles northwest, where Harry was in police custody. Apparently a clue found close to the body strongly suggested that here were the remains of Nola Kellergan; a police spokesman had already indicated that if this information was confirmed, Harry Quebert would also be named as a suspect in the murder of one Deborah Cooper, the last person to have seen Nola alive on August 30, 1975. Cooper had been found murdered the same day, after calling the police. It was appalling. The rumble grew ever louder as the news crossed the country in real time, relayed by television, radio, the Internet, and social networks: Harry Quebert, sixty-seven, one of the greatest authors of the second half of the twentieth century, was a child predator.
It took me a long time to realize what was happening. Several hours, perhaps. At 8 p.m., when a worried Douglas came by to see how I was holding up, I was still convinced that the whole thing was a mistake.
“How can they accuse him of two murders when they’re not even sure it’s the body of this Nola?” I said.
“Well, there was a corpse buried in his yard, however you look at it.”
“But why would he have brought people in to dig up the place where he’d supposedly buried a body? It makes no sense! I have to go there.”
“Go where?”
“New Hampshire. I have to defend Harry.”
Douglas replied with that down-to-earth Midwestern sobriety: “Absolutely not, Marcus. Don’t go there. You don’t want to get involved in this mess.”
“Harry called me . . .”
“When? Today?”
“About one this afternoon. I must have been the one telephone call he was allowed. I have to go there and support him! It’s very important.”
“Important? What’s important is your second book. I hope you haven’t been taking me for a ride and that you really will have a manuscript ready by the end of the month. Barnaski is shitting bricks. Do you realize what’s going to happen to Harry? Don’t get mixed up in this, Marc. Don’t screw up your career.”
On T V the state attorney general was giving a press conference. He listed the charges against Harry: kidnapping and two counts of murder. Harry was formally accused of having murdered Deborah Cooper and Nola Kellergan. And the punishment for these crimes, taken together, was death.
Harry’s fall was only just beginning. Footage of the preliminary hearing, which was held the next day, was broadcast on T V. We saw Harry arrive in the courtroom, tracked by dozens of T V cameras and illuminated by photolighting, handcuffed, and surrounded by policemen. He looked as if he had been through hell: somber faced, unshaven, hair disheveled, shirt unbuttoned, eyes swollen. His lawyer, Benjamin Roth, stood next to him. Roth was a renowned attorney in Concord who had often advised Harry in the past. I knew him slightly, having met him a few times at Goose Cove.
The whole country was able to watch the hearing live as Harry pleaded not guilty, and the judge ordered him remanded into custody in New Hampshire’s State Prison for Men. But this was only the start of the storm. At that moment I still had the naive hope that it would all be over soon, but one hour after the hearing, I received a call from Benjamin Roth.
“Harry gave me your number,” he said. “He insisted I call. He wants you to know that he’s innocent, that he didn’t kill anybody.”
“I know he’s innocent,” I said. “Tell me how he’s doing?”
“Not too great, as you can imagine. The cops have been giving him a hard time. He admitted to having a fling with Nola the summer she disappeared.”
“I knew about Nola. What about the rest?”
Roth hesitated a second before answering. “He denies it. But . . .”
“But what?” I demanded.
“Marcus, I’m not going to hide it from you. This is going to be difficult. The evidence is . . .”
“The evidence is what? Tell me, for God’s sake!”
“This has to stay a secret. No one can know.”
“I won’t say a word. You can trust me.”
“Along with the girl’s remains the investigators found the manuscript of The Origin of Evil.”
“What?”
“I’m telling you, the manuscript of that damn book was buried with her. Harry is in deep shit.”
“What does Harry say?”
“He says he wrote that book for her. That she was always snooping around his home in Goose Cove, and that sometimes she would borrow his pages to read. He says that a few days before she disappeared, she took the manuscript home with her.”
“What? He wrote that book for her?”
“Yes. But that can’t get out, under any circumstances. You can imagine the scandal there’d be if the media found out that one of the bestselling books of the last fifty years is not a simple love story, like everyone thinks, but based on an illicit affair between a guy of thirty-four and a girl of fifteen . . .”
“Can you get him released on bail?”
“Bail? You don’t understand how serious this is. There’s no question of bail when it comes to capital crimes. The punishment he risks is lethal injection. Ten days from now his case will be presented to a grand jury, which will decide whether to pursue charges and hold a trial. It’s just a formality. There’s no doubt there will be a trial.”
“And in the meantime?”
“He’ll stay in prison.”
“But if he’s innocent?”
“That’s the law. I’m telling you—this is a very serious situation. He’s accused of murdering two people.”
I slumped back on the couch. I had to talk to Harry.
“Ask him to call me!” I said to Roth.
“I’ll pass on your message.”
“Tell him I absolutely have to talk to him, and that I’m waiting for his call.”
Right after hanging up, I went to my bookshelves and found my copy of The Origin of Evil. Harry’s inscription was on the first page:
To Marcus, my most brilliant student
Your friend,
H. L. Quebert, May 1999
I immersed myself once again in that book, which I hadn’t opened in years. It was a love story, mixing a straight narrative with epistolary passages, the story of a man and woman who loved each other without really being allowed to love each other. So he had written this book for that mysterious girl about whom I still knew nothing. I finished rereading it in the middle of the night, and contemplated the title. And for the first time I wondered what it meant: Why The Origin of Evil? What kind of evil was Harry talking about?
---------
Two days passed, during which the DNA analyses and dental impressions confirmed that the skeleton discovered at Goose Cove was indeed that of Nola Kellergan. The investigators were able to determine that the skeleton was that of a fifteen-year-old child, indicating that Nola had died more or less at the time of her disappearance. But, most important, a fracture at the back of the skull provided the certainty, even after more than thirty years, that Nola Kellergan had died from at least one blow to the head.
I had no news of Harry. I tried to get in touch with him through the state police, through the prison, and through Roth, but without success. I paced my apartment, tormented by thousands of questions, plagued by the memory of his weird call. By the end of the weekend, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I decided that I had little choice but to go to see what was happening in New Hampshire.
Product details
- ASIN : 0143126687
- Publisher : Penguin Books; First Edition (May 27, 2014)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 656 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780143126683
- ISBN-13 : 978-0143126683
- Item Weight : 1.32 pounds
- Dimensions : 1.6 x 5.5 x 8.2 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #75,654 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,213 in Amateur Sleuths
- #5,495 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- #7,670 in Suspense Thrillers
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Joël Dicker was born in Geneva in 1985, where he studied Law. THE TRUTH ABOUT THE HARRY QUEBERT AFFAIR was nominated for the Prix Goncourt and won the Grand Prix du Roman de l'Académie Française and the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens. It soon became a worldwide success in 2014, publishing in 42 countries and selling more than 3.5 million copies. In the UK it was a Times number one bestseller, and was chosen for the Richard and Judy Book Club as well as Simon Mayo's Radio 2 Book Club.
In May 2017 his novel THE BALTIMORE BOYS, already making waves across Europe and number one in several countries, will be published for the first time in English. Both a sequel and a prequel to THE TRUTH ABOUT THE HARRY QUEBERT AFFAIR, it will centres around traumatic events that blight the lives of the Baltimore branch of Marcus Goldman's family.
In the meantime Joël has become "brand ambassador" for the Citroen DS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTKep1n4kFU.
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Top reviews from the United States
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I would give this book a 4 out of 5. I was not too big of a fan of the ending and there are a few loose ends that I felt were not wrapped up with the complete storyline and its parts. I would still recommend it to read.
The book has two main characters: the narrator and his mentor Harry Quebert. I didn't find either of them particularly sympathetic or even realistic. The loss of Harry Quebert's "soul mate", the murdered Nola, is very sad of course, but returning to his grief over and over becomes, at least for me, tedious. Nola herself is very sketchy, and is the subject of all sorts of changes, doubts and psychological revisions
Perhaps it is the translation, but I found the dialogue naive and unconvincing, the writing "advice" usually superficial, and the sexual references basically self-conscious, ambiguous (especially with respect to Harry and Nola), definitely unexciting, and actually quite old-fashioned.
The frequent plot twists ("red herrings" mentioned above) are clever at first, but after a while I simply ignored any hints the author offered since it was clear they were not to be trusted, since new information was almost certainly to be introduced rendering them "inoperative".
Nevertheless, the book is a pretty good summertime distraction, which is, after all, why I purchased it (Kindle edition). I don't think it will become a classic.
Top reviews from other countries
Assolutamente consigliato!