Joël Dicker was denied several of his stories before becoming the prolific and famous writer we know today. Fortunately, he is determined. For him, writing is a passion, even an impulse, which cannot be curbed. So much so that when he imagines his famous investigation, The truth about the Harry Quebert affair (Éditions de Fallois, 2012), he is already dreaming of a trilogy, although he expects rebuffs.
The sequel is worthy of a fairy tale. The book seduced Bernard de Fallois, publisher of an independent French house – before winning the hearts of the whole world. Translated into 40 languages and sold over 5 million copies, The truth about the Harry Quebert affair is the best-selling French-language novel of the last decade in all of French publishing. Joël Dicker even decides to found his own publishing house, Rosie & Wolfe, and to recover the rights to his books.
The doors are therefore wide open for this trilogy project. But the novelist hesitates. “I couldn’t write volume 2 right away… you would have thought that I was taking the easy route, that I was trying to surf on my success, he says, joined by The duty during a visit to Montreal for a few days. So I wrote the third instead, The Baltimore Book, and other novels. Then I felt ready. »
The Alaska Sanders case, appeared recently in bookstores in Quebec, is camped a few years after the Harry Quebert affair, after the writer Marcus Goldman, who contributed to digging up the truth, won a monster success with a novel which tells the outcome of the investigation.
This time, the hero is called upon to dive back into a murder case that we thought had been solved for a long time. In 1999, the body of Alaska Sanders, a beauty queen, was found on the edge of a lake in Mount Pleasant, a charming little town in New Hampshire. The crime is quickly solved, the police obtaining the confessions of the culprit and his accomplice.
However, 11 years later, Sergeant Perry Gahalowood – in charge of the investigation at the time – receives an anonymous letter telling him that he has followed a false lead and that the culprit is still at large. Consumed by doubt, he calls on his friend Marcus Goldman to shed light on the events.
“I like the idea of pairing a writer with an investigator, since the two have different motivations. The first has an unbridled imagination that allows me to launch dozens of tracks, in which the second can make a little order. »
A virtuoso of suspense
This improbable duo also allows Joël Dicker to stay away from investigative techniques and very obscure police sciences, and to offer an immersive novel as there are few. “This artisanal side creates a proximity with the reader, who can reason point by point with the investigators. The latter move, observe, dig and question. There is nothing in what they discover that the reader would not have been able to decode for themselves. »
To reach the greatest number of readers, the author does not hesitate to appeal to the codes of popular literature. The style is markedly simple; the direct dialogues, almost banal in their sentimentality. The sense of suspense is impeccable. “As I wrote books that were rejected, it forced me to stop and ask myself what people expected, what I could do better and different. I realized that what I was writing was too personal. It wasn’t even what I wanted to read. Reading, for me, is a way to live an adventure, to get out of everyday life. I always keep this goal in mind. »
The strength of The Alaska Sanders case — as with its predecessor — rests in the virtuoso entanglement of its narrative frameworks, which keeps the reader in suspense and never ceases to offer him false leads and spectacular twists. It is surprising that a puzzle of such magnitude has been written without even the sketch of a plan.
“I feel like I’m limited, missing something when I follow a plan. It’s like when you’re on vacation in a city. If we just follow Google Maps to get from point A to point B, we miss out on a lot of surprises. With writing, I try several directions to see where they will lead me. Sometimes I find myself in a dead end and have to start over. It requires a lot of work, but I like this freedom. »
It is moreover to offer himself maximum latitude that Joël Dicker chose to camp the universe of Goldman and Gahalowood in the United States, at the heart of its excesses, its puritanism and its aborted dreams.
“This universe necessarily tells of me all the summers spent in Maine, from 4 to 25 years old. I wanted to tell about these places, this region that I know by heart and which offered me a fantastic playground. Teleporting my story to this place also allowed me to put some distance between me, the writer, and the novel. »
Now that The truth about the Harry Quebert affair has also been adapted for television — with Patrick Dempsey in the title role — it would be easy for the freedom-loving novelist to feel restricted by television codes and the images that bring life and provide sort of answers about the world he created. ” On the contrary. This experience allowed me to realize how much the novel was easier, more permissive. Putting it into pictures is a real headache. A simple rain requires water, cisterns, poles, a crane. In literature, I can do anything, everything has to be invented. »