Da tempo ero in cerca di un buon thriller da leggere che mi catturasse davvero. In libreria scorgo una copertina che mi attira più degli altri. Il titolo mi intriga e leggendo la quarta di copertina sembra proprio che faccia al caso mio. “La Verità sul Caso di Herry Quebert”. Il libro mi rapisce letteralmente e le pagine non sembrano essere abbastanza per celare un segreto così torbido, intricato e longevo.
For long time I was looking for a good thriller novel that really captures me. At the book-store I found a cover with a picture hat attracts me more than others. The title intrigues me and once read the back cover it feels likes this is the book i was looking for. So I start reading “The Truth About the Herry Quebert Affair“. The book literally hook me and the pages do not seem to be enough to conceal a so dark, intricate and long-lived secret.
Marcus is a writer with a successful book, a typical writer’s block and a million dollar contract to write the second masterpiece of his life that just does not seem ready come to life. So panicked he left Manhattan and takes refuge in New Hampshire to visit his professor Harry Quebert. The lone man is famous for writing a masterpiece of American literature – “The Origins of Evil” – and he is the right person to give Marcus an infusion of energy. During the stay, however, the young writer makes an unexpected discovery in the memories of Quebert. A few days after returning to New York, Marcus learns that in the garden of his old professor was found a corpse. It is the body of the young Nola Kellergan. Disappeared in a late summer night of 1975 and never been found until now.
In a rapidly changing events Marcus realizes that the girl died had the same face he found in this secret photos of Harry Quebert. Marcus, astonished to learn the shocking news, realizes he is the only one who can help his faithful friend Harry Quebert, to solve the murder case in which the old man is involved and to get him out of prison. So in Aurora, an imaginary town overlooking the icy ocean waters, they unravel the secrets and mysteries hidden for a long time. A call to the police in the middle of the night, a sinister figure in the dark forest, the death of an elderly woman, a mysterious Chevrolet, an appointment to the motel on the highway and the corpse of a girl apparently happy and elusive that hid terrible secrets.
Marcus with the help of Sergeant Gahalawood will have to solve a thirty years-long puzzle. Dig in the depths of the town, in the memories of its inhabitants and redial a complicated case that a clue after another becomes increasingly difficult to solve. Why Reverend Kellergan dind’t want to reveal the past of his family? Why Harry Quebert doesn’t reveal Marcus all the details? But, above all, who killed Nola Kellergan?
Joël Dicker, thirty-something Swiss writer, graduated in Law School in Geneva. Always passionate of writing he begins writing he’s own short-story “Le Tigre” and later the novel “Les Derniers Jours de Nos Pères” which won him the Geneva Writer’s Prize in 2010. Subsequently he devoted two years to writing his first Thriller novel. With great skill outlines the characters’s profiles, it enriches the story with secrets and clues worthy of the most complex puzzles and forces you to read one page after another to arrive as quickly as possible to find out “The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair“.
A cross between a thriller movie and an immaculate painting of rural America by Edward Hopper, this book is perfect if you are looking for a compelling story to read all in one breath!
