Book Reviews

Joël Dicker new novel follows the same style of his previous books, The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair and The Disappearance of Stephany Miller. This time, oddly and genially mixing the thriller gender along with a bit of comedy and even reality, as the author himself gets inside the story.

Because it is the same Joël Dicker, helped with a friend, who decides to investigate the murder years ago in the same room of the hotel where he is staying. It happened during a sumptuous party of one of the most important Suisse banks of Geneva and got involved all the high directives of the bank.

Decker decides to get involved scaping a romantic break-up that left his heart broken. His girlfriend, a neighbour, left him because he was too involved in his writing. Therefore he decided to dig into the story of the murder, as the only way of saving himself for loneliness so characteristic of writers. It looks that at every step, the murderer runs a step forward. At the end, only getting deeper and obsessively into the lives of the bank board of directors and their families is how Decker finds himself an unexpected finale.

I liked all the stories blended in the same book. At the beginning, the author has a conversation with her partner of adventures, another host at the hotel, on how a novel of fiction should be written. Step by step Dicker explains that a book like that has to be constructed on a question that must have more or less a reasonable response. Why a person would become a criminal? How are the circumstances that the person has had to live to arrive at their current decisions? Only by responding to this queries a plot of the thriller with come to light.

I liked the drama, that involves love and treason, happening in big parties inside the mansions of the high society, where money is definitely not an issue, at least at the beginning, because it is precisely because of the lack of money, needed to sustain that lavish style of life, the source of all the problems that lead to the fatal encounter

I liked the unexpected twists, where nobody and nothing is what it seems. I liked the little lessons on how to write fiction, and I loved the homage that Dicker does to his former editor, who passed away just before the publication of the book.

A 100% recommended story for those who love the fiction of Joël Dicker.

Luz