The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair

Description

Instant New York Times Bestseller

“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

“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

Joel Dicker was born in 1985 in Geneva, Switzerland, where he later studied law. He spent childhood summers in New England, particularly in Stonington and Bar Harbor, Maine. The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair won three French literary prizes, including the Grand Prix du Roman from the Académie Française, and was a finalist for the Prix Goncourt. It has sold more than two million copies across Europe. Dicker lives in Geneva.

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.

INTRODUCTION
“Only write fiction. Anything else will just bring you trouble” (p. 161).

Marcus Goldman is riding high. The twenty-eight-year-old writer is “the new darling of American letters” (p. 12), and his debut novel has sold two million copies. But when it comes time to produce a new book, Marcus is sidelined by a crippling case of writer’s block. As he struggles to rediscover his muse, Marcus becomes enmeshed in a mystery of more than three decades that will ultimately threaten both his career and his very life.

Before becoming a big-time New York City writer, Marcus attended Burrows College. It was at Burrows that Marcus first met his writing professor—and his personal hero—Harry Quebert. Thirty years earlier, Harry’s novel The Origin of Evil won a slew of prestigious awards and turned him into an overnight celebrity. The star professor took a liking to Marcus and made him his protégé. In despair and with no one else to turn to, Marcus decides to pay Harry a long-overdue visit in the quiet town of Somerset, New Hampshire.

Harry welcomes Marcus to Goose Cove, his large and lovely seaside home. During his stay, Marcus stumbles upon a passionate correspondence between Harry and a young girl named Nola Kellergan. He also finds old newspaper clippings detailing Nola’s mysterious disappearance in 1975. She was last sighted covered in blood in the woods near Somerset—and never seen again.

In 1975, Harry was in his mid-thirties, and Marcus is shocked by the fact that his adored mentor had been romantically involved with a fifteen-year-old girl. Childless and unmarried, Harry swears Nola was the love of his life, and Marcus promises never to reveal Harry’s secret.

Still unable to write, Marcus returns to New York City, where he grimly awaits his publisher’s deadline. Then the news breaks: Nola’s remains have been found buried at Goose Cove—along with a manuscript copy of The Origin of Evil. The evidence is circumstantial, but Harry is indicted for murder and his affair with an underage girl has been made public.

Marcus again travels to Somerset, this time to support the man who’s always stood by him. The media is having a field day, and even the once adoring townspeople have turned against Harry. Only one person is thrilled with the scandal: Marcus’s publisher, Roy Barnaski. Since Marcus hasn’t delivered another novel, he proposes that his delinquent author instead write a nonfiction account of “The Harry Quebert Affair.” The crime has captured the public’s imagination, and Barnaski believes Marcus’s insider’s account could make millions.

Marcus refuses to exploit Harry’s tragedy, but he can’t help wondering about the fifteen-year-old girl who captured his friend’s heart—and why someone wanted her dead. Much to the chagrin of state and local authorities, one question leads to another, and soon Marcus has undertaken his own investigation.

A blockbuster bestseller in Europe, The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair brilliantly skewers small-town life, the publishing industry, and our cultural obsession with celebrity and scandal. Filled with more twists and turns than a Hitchcock film, Joël Dicker’s sly and action-packed book-within-a-book firmly establishes the Swiss writer as one of the most dynamic new voices in fiction.

ABOUT JOEL DICKER

Born in 1985, Joël Dicker first began writing when he was ten years old, founding a nature magazine called Animals’ Gazette. He was named “Switzerland’s youngest editor in chief” by the Tribune de Genève, and the publication won the Cunéo Prize for the Protection of Nature. Later, he attended drama school and earned his law school degree before turning to writing full time. The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair is his second novel. In Europe, it knocked Dan Brown’s Inferno off the top of the bestseller lists, and rights have been sold in more than thirty countries. Dicker grew up in Geneva, but spent childhood summers in the United States.

A CONVERSATION WITH JOEL DICKER

Q. Your Web site says that you wrote The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair because you wanted to try your hand at an “American novel.” Did you simply mean “set in America” or something else?

I simply wanted to place a work of fiction in a New England setting, a place I know well.  Very quickly I realized that I was so familiar with the U.S. that I could allow myself to create an American town with American characters.  Actually, this book helped me discover a part of myself: that I could surpass my origins and my writing language and re-create a part of the United States in French.

Q. It’s impossible to read Harry Quebert without thinking of Lolita. How much—if at all—were you conscious of Nabokov’s novel while writing your own?

The Lolita image came to me late.  I was well into writing the book when I decided that Harry’s character would have a relationship with a young girl.  In my head I immediately made the link to Lolita, from which came my reference N-O-L-A, like L-O-L-I-T-A.  However, having read Lolita when I was fifteen, I had an image which was much more naive than the image that hit me straight in the face when I reread the book a few months ago.  I realized that we evolve with books, and that reading Lolita at age twenty-nine is a different experience from reading it at fifteen.

Q. Does either Harry Quebert or The Origin of Evil have a real-life counterpart?

Not at all.  Nothing in the book or in the characters is based on anything real, anything experienced or a true event.  That’s precisely why I like fiction: you can invent everything.

Q. Like you, the novel’s narrator is a young, attractive, and incredibly successful author. Do the parallels between Marcus Goldman and Joël Dicker go any deeper?

No, not at all.  There is a little bit of me in each character.  That’s normal, since I’m the one who created them.  But aside from our common love of running, there is no more Marcus in me than there is Harry, Jenny, Tamara, Robert, or Gahalowood.

Q. Many writers fall victim to what’s called the sophomore slump. You did just the opposite and wrote a second book that was even more successful than your first. Did you—like your characters—experience a long period of writer’s block before you began Harry Quebert? Did you have any inkling that you had written a million-plus-copy bestseller?

No, luckily I’ve never had writer’s block.  Sometimes I have doubts, as there are always lots of questions that arise while a book evolves, but I’ve never had a block.  Doubt is good: it makes us reexamine ourselves and allows our work to progress.  So, no, I never thought this book would be a bestseller, because of my doubts.  In fact, I was wondering who among my friends would accept to read such a long manuscript all the way to the end!

Q. You began your writing career early and founded a nature magazine when you were only ten. But then you went to law school before returning to writing. Why the detour?

Because I also wanted to study, and to get a diploma.  There are no creative writing courses in Switzerland or France, and the humanities department at the university didn’t interest me.  I’ve always liked law.  For me, it wasn’t a detour.  I like variety.

Q. Who are your major literary influences?

I’ve always learned a lot by reading Romain Gary.  And when reading Marguerite Duras, you get the impression that not one word, not one sentence, is out of place. In American literature, I have always loved John Steinbeck.

Q. Do you think that the potential for the kind of evil that killed Nola Kellergan lurks in every small town?

No, it’s not a question of small town or big city.  It’s a question about people.  

Q. The novel has an incredibly cinematic feel. How would you feel about it being turned into a movie?

Excited, obviously, because the movie world is very exciting.  But worried at the same time: books are better than movies.  The imagination is free, time is unlimited, and characters take the face you lend them.  Cinema is not free: the film’s length is limited, you have to cut so it fits into two hours, and the characters’ faces are set as the  faces of the actors who play them.

Q. Did you invent Harry’s thirty-one rules for writing or were they handed down to you by someone else? And would you recommend these rules to real-life writers?

I made up those rules.  I would not recommend them, in the sense that they are self-evident: for example, I say that the first chapter has to be attention-grabbing or else you lose your reader.  That seems totally obvious!   Regardless, these rules are related to creative writing theories, which don’t exist in French literature.

Q. What are you working on now?

I’m working on a new novel.  I prefer not to talk about it, because that’s my fun and my freedom, to be the only one to know for the moment.  I think it’s a pity to talk about the book you’re in the middle of writing: you deprive yourself of a rare and precious moment of freedom.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. While you were reading the novel, were you conscious of the fact that it was originally written in French?
2. Were Harry and Nola in love? Is true love possible between an adult in his thirties and a fifteen-year-old adolescent?
3. There are no explicit sex scenes between Harry and Nola in the novel. Is it possible that their relationship was unconsummated?
4. How well do you think Dicker captured small-town American life? Are the Quinns a typical American family?
5. Is Marcus a reliable narrator?
6. Do you agree with Marcus’s ultimate decision to write a book about “The Harry Quebert Affair”? What would you have done in his position?

[Spoiler warning: Don’t read ahead if you don’t want to know too much!]

1. Who was Nola Kellergan: a victim, a seductress, or something else?
2. Elijah Stern goes to great lengths to atone for the crime he committed in his youth. Did his actions adequately compensate his victim?
3. Was Harry, in part, to blame for Nola’s death because of the way he misled Jenny Quinn?
4. How did the truth about The Origin of Evil affect your opinion of Harry? Should he have publicly admitted that it was really written by someone else?
5. Did you suspect the identity of the true killer?
6. Were you satisfied that justice had been served?

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof.***
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.

US

Additional information

Weight	21.2 oz
Dimensions	1.3800 × 5.4700 × 8.4300 in
Imprint	Penguin Books
Format	General Trade
ISBN-13	09780143126683
ISBN-10	0143126687
Author	Joel Dicker
Audience	General / adult
BISAC	FIC050000, FIC022100
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