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After reading and really enjoying Joel Dicker’s story-within-a-story mystery The Enigma of Room 622, I decided I should go back and read his best-selling The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair. I finally put that into my reading rotation, and it was just as satisfying as Enigma.
A young novelist who gained fame from his debut book is up against a contract deadline and is experiencing crippling writer’s block. So he decides to visit his mentor, Harry Quebert, who taught Marcus how to craft a good book. Marcus leaves New York City and goes to Somerset, New Hampshire, and ends up staying in Harry’s beautiful home near the beach.
Soon after Marcus’s arrival, the remains of a teen girl are found in Harry’s backyard. Everyone connects the dots to the case of a girl from Somerset who went missing 30 years before. Harry admits that he had an affair back then (as a 30-something man) with the 15-year-old Nola Kellergan. But he insists he did not kill her. In fact, he’s been mourning her loss for all these years.
Marcus gets involved and carries out his own investigation to help his old friend. All the while, he’s still getting hounded by his publisher and agent to get a book written. He has to figure out the answers to both concerns — soon.
A lot is going on in this long novel, which, like Enigma, is a clever book within a book. Dicker weaves a lot of threads together and finally reveals “the truth.” The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair is a real page-turner, and even as long as it is, I read it very quickly. I did guess one vital plot point pretty early on, but not how that connected to the culprit. (I felt pretty proud of myself for that.) It didn’t spoil the whole experience one bit. Now to read his new book! (One quibble: this book has a lot more profanity than the newer one, which was just rated moderate.)
Rated: High. Profanity includes 26 uses of strong language, around 50 instances of moderate profanity, around 70 uses of mild language, and about 90 instances of the name of Deity in vain. Sexual content includes a number of references to and crude talk about sex acts. Violence includes a woman shot dead, several references to a young woman being beaten bloody and running from an attacker, a young woman’s remains being found buried in a yard years after her killing, and a couple of instances of police officers beating someone.
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