The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair Read online

  THE TRUTH ABOUT THE HARRY QUEBERT AFFAIR

  JOËL DICKER

  Translated from the French by Sam Taylor

  First published in the French language as La Vérité sur l’Affaire Harry Quebert by Éditions de Fallois / L’ge d’Homme, Paris, 2012 First published in Great Britain in 2014 by

  MacLehose Press

  An imprint of Quercus Editions Ltd

  55 Baker Street

  7th Floor, South Block

  London W1U 8EW

  Copyright © Editions de Fallois / L’ge d’Homme, 2012

  English translation copyright © Sam Taylor, 2014

  Hardback endpapers by SALU

  The moral right of Joël Dicker to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Sam Taylor asserts his moral right to be identified as the translator of the work

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN (HB) 978 0 85705 309 1

  ISBN (TPB) 978 0 85705 310 7

  ISBN (Ebook) 978 1 84866 325 1

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  You can find this and many other great books at:

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk and

  www.maclehosepress.com

  FRANCE

  “By the end you are exhausted and delighted by the relentless stream of literary adrenaline which the narrator has continuously injected into your veins”

  MARC FUMAROLI, Le Figaro

  “If you dip your toes into this major novel, you’ll have had it; you won’t be able to stop yourself racing through it to the last page. You’ll be manipulated, thrown off course, flabbergasted, irritated and captivated by a story with manifold new developments, false trails and spectacular turns of events”

  BERNARD PIVOT, Le Journal du Dimanche

  “A masterstroke … a kind of crime novel with not one plot line but many, full of shifting rhythms, changes of course and multiple layers which, like a Russian doll, slot together beautifully”

  MARIANNE PAYOT, L’Express

  ITALY

  “After The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair, the contemporary novel will no longer be the same and nobody can pretend not to realize it. Verdict: Summa cum laude … At least 110 out of 10. A beautiful novel”

  ANTONIO D’ORRICO, Corriere della Sera

  “Narrative talent is about making an artwork out of life. Dicker has got it”

  MASSIMO GRAMELLINI, Vanity Fair

  SPAIN

  “The furore inspired by the extremely young Dicker and his masterful novel is quite something: we have before us the great thriller that everyone has been waiting for since the Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson”

  LAURA FERNÁNDEZ, El Cultural de El Mundo

  “This book will be celebrated and studied by future writers. It is a model thriller … Do read this book”

  ENRIQUE DE HÉRIZ, El Periódico de Catalunya

  “I have never wanted to recommend a book so highly … I was mesmerized and intrigued long after I had finished reading … A combination of echoes from ‘Twin Peaks’ and the ‘Death on the Staircase’ series, John Grisham, ‘Psycho’ and ‘The Exorcist,’ and The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving”

  SERGI PÁMIES, La Vanguardia

  GERMANY

  “Joël Dicker has written a novel that demonstrates just what can be achieved when a young writer has the courage to give absolutely everything to their work … Not only has he dared to take on the greats of his craft like Philip Roth or John Irving, but indeed he has often outdone them … This has all the ingredients of a global bestseller”

  PEER TEUWSEN, Die Ziet

  “Brilliantly narrated”

  THOMAS BURMEISTER, Stern

  THE NETHERLANDS

  “Joël Dicker overwhelms his readers. Wonderful dialogue, colourful characters, breathtaking twists and a plot that allows no pause for breath … all is perfectly weaved together to create an irresistible story in which absolutely nothing is as it seems”

  TROUW

  “Dicker writes a story full of such intelligence and subtlety that you can only regret the fact it comes to an end. A novel that works on so many levels: a crime story, a love story, a comedy of manners, but equally an incisive critique of the art of the modern author”

  Elsevier

  ROMANIA

  “It’s a crime novel, noir fiction, a coming-of-age story, a romance, a burlesque, a novel within a novel within a novel, a postmodern novel”

  Cărtureşti.ro

  “It was said about this novel that it’s a kind of Swiss Millennium Trilogy. Probably because it is not a slim work, but also because of the way in which this novel uses a social and political background that is indubitably real”

  HotNews.ro

  To my parents

  The Day of the Disappearance

  (Saturday, August 30, 1975)

  “Somerset Police. What’s your emergency?”

  “Hello? My name is Deborah Cooper. I live on Side Creek Lane. I think I’ve just seen a man running after a girl in the woods.”

  “Could you tell me exactly what happened, ma’am?”

  “I don’t know! I was standing by the window. I looked over toward the woods, and I saw this girl running through the trees. There was a man behind her. I think she was trying to get away from him.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “I can’t see them anymore. They’re in the forest.”

  “I’m sending a patrol over right now, ma’am.”

  The news story that would shock the town of Somerset, New Hampshire, began with this phone call. On that day, Nola Kellergan, a fifteen-year-old local girl, disappeared. No trace of her could be found.

  PROLOGUE

  October 2008

  (thirty-three years after the disappearance)

  My book was the talk of the town. I could no longer walk the streets of Manhattan in peace. I could no longer go jogging without passersby recognizing me and calling out, “Look, it’s Goldman! It’s that writer!” Some even started running after me so they could ask me the questions that were gnawing at them: “Is it true what you say in your book? Did Harry Quebert really do that?” In the café in the West Village where I was a regular, certain customers felt free to sit at my table and talk to me. “I’m reading your book right now, Mr Goldman. I can’t put it down! The first one was good, of course, but this one … Did they really pay you two million bucks to write it? How old are you? I bet you’re not even thirty. Twenty-eight! And you’re already a multi-millionaire!” Even the doorman at my building, whose progress through my book I was able to note each time I came or went, cornered me for a long talk by the elevator once he had got to the end. “So that’s what happened to Nola Kellergan? That poor girl! But how could it happen? How could such a thing be possible, Mr Goldman?”

  All of New York, the entire country, in fact, was going crazy for my book. Only two weeks had passed since its publication, and it already promised to be the best-selling book of the year. Everyone wanted to know what had happened in Somerset in 1975. They were talking about it everywhere: on T.V., on the radio, in every
newspaper, all over the Internet. In my late twenties, I had, with this book—only the second of my career—become the most famous writer in the country.

  The case that had shocked the nation, and from which the core of my story was taken, had blown up several months earlier, at the beginning of summer, when the remains of a girl who had been missing for thirty-three years were discovered. So began the events described in this book, without which the rest of America would never even have heard of the little town of Somerset, New Hampshire.

  PART ONE

  Writers’ Disease

  (eight months before the book’s publication)

  31

  In the Caverns of Memory

  “The first chapter, Marcus, is essential. If the readers don’t like it, they won’t read the rest of your book. How do you plan to begin yours?”

  “I don’t know, Harry. Do you think I’ll ever be able to do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Write a book.”

  “I’m certain you will.”

  In early 2008, about a year and a half after my first novel had made me the new darling of American letters, I was seized by a terrible case of writer’s block—a common affliction, I am told, for writers who have enjoyed sudden, meteoric success. My terror of the blank page did not hit me suddenly; it crept over me bit by bit, as if my brain were slowly freezing up. I had deliberately ignored the symptoms when they first appeared. I told myself that inspiration would return tomorrow, or the day after, or perhaps the day after that. But the days and weeks and months went by, and inspiration never returned.

  My descent into Hell was divided into three stages. The first, necessary for all breakneck falls, was a blistering rise. My first novel sold one million copies, propelling me, in my twenties, into the upper echelons of the literary world. It was the fall of 2006, and within a few weeks I was a celebrity. I was everywhere: on T.V. screens, in newspapers, on the covers of magazines. My face smiled out from huge advertisements on the subway. Even the harshest critics on the East Coast agreed: Marcus Goldman was destined to become a great writer.

  After only one book, the doors of a new life were opening to me. I left my parents’ place in New Jersey and moved into a plush apartment in the Village. I swapped my old Ford for a brand new Range Rover with tinted windows. I started going out to expensive restaurants. I had taken on a literary agent who also managed my schedule and came to watch baseball with me on a giant screen in my new apartment. I rented an office close to Central Park, where a secretary named Denise, who was a little in love with me, opened my mail, made me coffee, and filed my important documents.

  For the first six months after the publication of the book, I contented myself with enjoying the sweetness of my new existence. In the mornings I went by the office to leaf through any new articles about me, to surf the Internet, and to read the dozens of fan letters I received every day. Then, feeling pleased with myself and satisfied that I’d done enough work for the day, I would wander the streets of Manhattan, causing a stir when I passed by. I spent the rest of my days enjoying the new rights I’d been granted by celebrity: the right to buy anything I liked; the right to a V.I.P. box in Madison Square Garden to watch the Rangers; the right to share red carpets with pop stars whose albums I had bought when I was younger; the right to make every man in New York jealous by dating Lydia Gloor, the star of the country’s top-rated T.V. show. Sure that my success would never end, I took no notice when my agent and my publisher fired off their first warnings about getting back to work and writing my second novel.

  It was during the next six months when I realized the tide was turning. The flood of fan mail slowed to a trickle, and fewer people stopped me on the street. Soon, those who did recognize me started asking, “Mr Goldman, what’s your next book about? And when’s it coming out?” I understood that it was time to get started, and I did. I wrote down ideas on loose sheets of paper and made outlines on my laptop. But it was no good. So I thought of other ideas and made other outlines. Again, without success. Finally, I bought a new laptop, in the hope that it would come pre-loaded with good ideas. All in vain. Next, I tried changing my work habits: I made Denise stay in my office until late at night so she could take dictation of what I imagined were great sentences, wonderful one-liners, and the beginnings of remarkable novels. But when I looked at them the next day, the one-liners seemed dull, the sentences badly constructed, and the beginnings all dead ends. I was entering the second stage of my disease.

  By the fall of 2007, a year after the publication of my first book, I had still not set down a single word of the next one. I began to understand that glory was a Gorgon who could turn you to stone if you failed to continue performing. My share of the public’s attention had been taken over by the latest rising politicians, the stars of the hottest new reality T.V. show and a rock band that had just broken through. It was a ludicrously short time frame as far as I was concerned since my book had appeared, but on a global scale it was an eternity. During that same year, in the United States, more than four million babies had been born, almost two and a half million people had died, more than thirty thousand had been shot to death, half a million had started taking drugs, fifty thousand had become millionaires, and some forty thousand had died in automobile accidents. And I had written just one book.

  Schmid & Hanson, the powerful New York publishers who had paid me a tidy sum to publish my first novel and who had great hopes for my future work, were pestering my agent, Douglas Claren—and he, in turn, was hounding me. He told me that time was running out, that it was imperative I produce a new manuscript. I tried to reassure him in order to reassure myself, telling him that my second novel was progressing well and that there was nothing to be worried about. But despite all the hours I spent in my office, the pages on my desk remained blank; inspiration had abandoned me without warning. At night, in bed, unable to sleep, I would torture myself by thinking that soon the great Marcus Goldman would no longer exist. That thought frightened me so much that I decided to go on vacation to clear my head. I treated myself to a month in a five-star hotel in Miami, supposedly to recharge my batteries, firmly convinced that relaxing beneath palm trees would enable me to rediscover my creative genius. But Florida was, of course, nothing but an attempt to escape. Two thousand years before me, the philosopher Seneca had experienced the same troublesome predicament: No matter where you go, your problems go with you. It was as if, having just arrived in Miami, a kind Cuban baggage handler had run after me as I left the airport and said:

  “Are you Mr Goldman?”

  “Yes.”

  “This belongs to you.”

  And he handed me an envelope containing a sheaf of papers.

  “Are these my blank pages?”

  “Yes, Mr Goldman. Surely you weren’t going to leave New York without them?”

  And so I spent that month in Florida alone with my demons in a luxury suite, wretched and disheartened. On my laptop, which I never shut down, the document I had named new novel.doc remained blank. It was after buying a margarita for the hotel pianist that I realized I had caught a disease sadly common in artistic circles. Sitting next to me at the bar, the pianist explained that he had written only one song in his entire life, but that it had been a massive hit. He had been so successful that he had never been able to write anything else, and now, penniless and miserable, he scraped out a living by playing other people’s tunes for the hotel’s guests. “I was touring all the time back then, performing in the biggest venues in the country,” he told me while gripping my lapel. “Ten thousand people screaming my name … chicks fainting or throwing their panties at me. It was something else, man.” And, having licked the salt from around his glass like a small dog, he added, “I swear to you it’s the truth.” That was the saddest thing: I knew he wasn’t lying.

  The third stage of my nightmare began when I returned to New York. On the plane home, I read an article about a young author who’d just published a novel to huge acclaim. Life was
taunting me: Not only had I been forgotten, but now I was going to be replaced. A panicky Douglas met me at the airport: Schmid & Hanson had run out of patience and they wanted proof that the novel was progressing and that I would soon submit the manuscript.

  “We’re up shit creek,” he told me in the car, as we drove back to Manhattan. “Please tell me your stay in Florida revived you, and that your book is almost finished! There’s this new guy everyone’s talking about … His book’s going to be a bestseller this Christmas. And you, Marcus? What have you got to give us for Christmas?”

  “I’m going to buckle down,” I promised him, as fear gripped me. “I’ll get there! We’ll do a big promotional campaign! People loved the first book—they’ll love the next one too!”

  “Marc, you don’t understand. We could have done that a few months ago. That was our strategy: ride the wave of your success. The public wanted Marcus Goldman, but as Marcus Goldman was busy chilling out in Florida, the readers bought a book by someone else instead. Books are interchangeable: People want a story that excites them, relaxes them, entertains them. And if you don’t give them that, someone else will—and you’ll be history.”

  Newly chastened, I went to work as never before: I began writing at six in the morning and didn’t stop until nine or ten at night, carried away by the frenzy of despair. I strung words and sentences together, came up with dozens of story ideas. But, much to my frustration, I didn’t produce anything worthwhile. Denise spent her days worrying about me. She had nothing else to do—no dictation to take, no letters to file. She paced up and down the hallway, and when she couldn’t take it anymore, she pounded on my door.

  “I’m begging you, Marcus,” she said. “Please, please open the door! Come out of your office for a while, go for a walk in the park. You haven’t eaten anything all day!”

  I yelled in reply: “Not hungry! Not hungry! No book, no dinner!”