The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair, by Joël Dicker

I finally gave in to this book. I've had it for I don't know how long in my library, and regularly someone would tell me about it and say it was good. Without much enthusiasm, more like a statement: "Yes, indeed, it's a good book. You can read it, you probably won't get bored."

On the back cover, some big names (one from the French Academy, the other from the Goncourt Academy) managed to excite me a bit more. Bernard Pivot, especially:

If you stick your nose into this big novel, you're screwed. You won't be able to stop yourself from running to the six hundredth page. You will be manipulated, baffled, flabbergasted, annoyed, fascinated by a story with multiple twists and turns, false leads and coups de théâtre.

Bernard Pivot, of the Académie Goncourt, Le Journal du Dimanche

Note the word "annoyed," the only negative in a series of mental states we all look for in a detective story.

And I pretty much agree. It's definitely a page-turner, and I was indeed baffled and flabbergasted. Manipulated, okay, to a certain extent. Passionate, one might say. But mostly...

Annoyed

That I was. Quite a bit. Of course, mostly because the dead little girl was 15 and "had a love affair" with a guy in his 30s. A guy who, decades later, still thinks he was in love with her.

So, you may know that this kind of talk can't convince me anymore. For me, it's over. A man who is seduced by a teenage girl who may have boobs but still talks like a kid, flirts with adults on the street, and is so awed by the fact that he's a writer is NOT CUTE. Period. And the book really doesn't emphasize that enough, on the contrary. The narrator ends up convinced that this man actually loved the girl. After all, you don't choose who you love, love is ageless, etc.

Annoyed, also, because I didn't like the characters. Marcus Goldman sounded rather like a douchebag, I obviously didn't like the old man, Nola (the 15 year old daughter) is downright daft, and the others are either a bit mean or just plain insignificant. What kept me going with the story was not my interest in the murder, but the way the book was written.

And finally, annoyed by the end. Because the murderer, whom we finally discover after too many false leads to shock us anymore, was another older man, a borderline pedophile, who was fancying Nola, and I had already had enough of one.

Ah, and the name. Quebert. Can someone explain to me how to pronounce it?

In short, not sure I would recommend it to you. Read something else.