The sequel to the Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair is a multi layered twisty.crime thriller set over two timelines. I liked the relationship between Marcus the writer and Sergeant Gahalowood, though at times the role of author as investigator felt unrealistic. The novel was a touch too long but the denouement very satisfying and the storytelling pristine.

A twist far too far 3.5 raised

I’m stop go with Dicker, I do love his intelligence, his twistiness, his interesting characters and the fact that a lot more is going on than just the crime investigation by a famous writer (Dicker’s somehow alter ego) Marcus Golding and laconic detective Perry Gahalowood, but in Alaska Sanders, as in his first, Harry Quebert, ultimately the cleverness becomes rather wearing, and the endless twists, well, endless.

I found myself, perhaps unfairly, comparing Dicker’s playing around with the writer as investigator, or playing with fiction itself, with that other much wittier writer pairing with a detective – Anthony Horowitz, in his Horowitz and Hawthorne outings. What I miss with Dicker is wit as well as incisiveness and sparkle

I had 5 starred Dicker’s more heartful, deeper investigation of mysteries in his fictional writer’s own family second novel, whereas I had 4 starred ‘Harry Quebert’ because The Baltimore Boys, involving more of Goldman’s background psychology and history had tenderness and heart, rather than a to the nth degree celebrally twisty journey.

I reveal no spoilers here, but this plot, which flips between 1999 (and sometimes a bit earlier) and 2010, including times inbetween, concerns the death of Alaska Sanders, and the subsequent police investigations. Alaska, a brilliant and beautiful young woman, model and aspiring actress, who somewhat mysteriously is working at a gas station, in small town Mount Pleasant, New Hampshire is violently killed in 1999. Though the murder was solved by the police, all was not quite as it seemed. One of the police team at that time was Perry Gahalowood, whim Marcus got to know and have a strong affection for, in ‘Harry Quebert’. Perry is one of the people who gave Marcus a sense of longed for family and community because of how Perry and his wife welcomed Marcus into their family.

Somehow, though, new information begins to suggest that the initial solve of Alaska’s murder may not have been quite as conclusive as things seemed. Marcus, now a famous writer gets involved again, in part because of his need for strong relationships with some kind of father figure, or cohesive family, to heal where these were lacking, or may have been lacking, in his boyhood. And then there is Marcus’ desire to be a family man himself, but, somehow, he can never quite commit, is never quite sure that any woman he is drawn to, is the one. He is not any kind of philanderer or Don Juan, but clearly has insecure attachment patterns

I thought Alaska Sanders would probably be a clear 4 star, perhaps even 4.5, but in the end the twisty and absorbing journey, which also incorporated Goldman’s neediness, his veneration of mythical golden family, need for a father figure and admired mentor, became a stretch too long and too twisty. The very final twist and revelations ensuing were a tangle far too far, and, frankly had a kind of gratuitous darkness and incredibility.

To sum up, perhaps too long (maybe like this review!) and definitely a final twist let down

This book is described as a slow burn police procedural however the writing is so good that it really doesn't feel like that. It is a thoroughly enjoyable read and the writer gives time to explore the story rather than the short chapter breakneck speed utilised by many writers. It makes a refreshing change to read writing like this.

I loved “The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair” so to dive back into this world of a writer diving passionately into local murders was very entertaining. This prequel/sequel had me guessing for a very long time… (perhaps ever so slightly too long a time) but I had to know what would happen at the end. I love the relationship between Gahalowood and his “writer”. A solid read.

Having read and thoroughly enjoyed both Harry Quebert and The Baltimore Boys, it was a no brainer that I would pounce on this book as soon as I could. Obviously, as already familiar with the previous Goldman books, as well as another couple of his books, I was well prepared for it being a drawn out, moving back and forward in time, long old tome. But, despite all those things, as well as having a bit of a vast cast of characters, it really didn't feel that long and I made decent progress throughout.
It all revolves around the murder of Alaska Saunders. Which was, at the time, an open and shut case, done deal. Once again, Marcus teams up with Sgt Perry Gahalowood when doubt is injected into the veracity of thr conviction. They eventually manage to glean just enough new evidence to persuade the powers that be to re-open the case properly.
Yes, it's a bit wordy, maybe pretentious, but it doesn't ever drag so, why not? The way it has been written with something happening in the present day invoking a reminiscence back to the past, and then we jump back to said past, all starts to have a bit of a "written for miniseries" feel to it, as well as allowing the story to progress efficiently. The previous two books are referred to in this one, but it is not wholly necessary to have read them to enjoy this one.
One thing I especially loved about this book was the relationship between Marcus and Perry, how it started with Harry Q and is rekindled and developed herein.
The plot is a bit on the twisty turny convoluted side. Deliciously so as it kept me on my toes throughout. I long gave up trying to second guess, and then kicked myself as certain revelations were made. Leaving me wholly satisfied at the end. Actually, I say that, but there is something that was introduced in this book which I reckon will form the basis for the next... Not a cliffhanger, more of a tempter, and that makes me very excited to read it...
My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

A long book that is confusing as there is so much detail and a lot of characters.
It helps to have read the Harry Quebert book.
Overall I enjoyed reading it because there are so many twists and turns. I thought I had guessed who the murderer was several times, but I was wrong and totally surprised.

Joel Dicker has an engaging way of writing, although at times, the story can feel quite drawn out. In this novel, I enjoyed the different view points and the switching between years. The police interview excepts added to the story also. You have to follow the story quite closely as there is lots going on as well as many characters. I did find that once I had gotten further into the story, it became clearer who was who and I was keen to find out the connections between the past and present, as well as what had happened to Alaska. There are lots of twists and turns, especially towards the end of the story, which at times can be difficult to follow; however, it is a very clever tangled web of lies, deception, relationships and occurrences bringing everything together in the end.

The murder of Alaska Sanders seemed to be an open-and-shut case: two suspects, one dead, one guilty. But eleven years later, when another woman is found dead, everything changes. Enter Marcus Goldman, an author turned investigator, who teams up with Sergeant Perry Gahalowood to reopen the case. What unfolds is a complex, slow-burn mystery that uncovers secrets no one could have anticipated.

Joël Dicker’s writing feels cinematic—each chapter pulls you further into the story, with the plot unfolding carefully and deliberately. The way he builds the mystery feels like piecing together a puzzle—clue by clue, twist by twist. You never feel like you’re ahead of the characters, which keeps the suspense alive.

The twist? Commendable (and I’m hard to please when it comes to twists!!). It wasn’t predictable, yet everything made perfect sense by the end. And while this book is over 500 pages, none of it felt excessive; every detail mattered, and I was fully invested the entire time.

I also have to mention the translator! It was one of those rare times I forgot I was reading a translation, it was seamless.

For fans of The Harry Quebert Affair, this sequel is a must and won’t disappoint!

Overall, I 100% recommend investing your time into this one. It’s a masterful murder mystery, and when you finally find out whodunnit, your jaw will hit the floor!

It’s been a very very long time since I read The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair.

I remember I liked it, and I liked Dicker’s sequel so I thought I’d give this a go, despite not remembering anything at all about the previous books.

This one has me hooked right away. At first the dual timelines were confusing but I settled in, and I liked how it jumped in perspective depending on who it was focusing on.

I feel like Dicker didn’t know how to approach his previous books and the character of Harry Quebert. In some places it felt like it was assumed you knew everything but in other parts it felt like it was retelling the story of that book.

I didn’t love the slightly meta approach to Marcus’ character however, who had written the truth about the Harry Querbert affair in this book.

However like a lot of thrillers, for me this completely fell apart in the last act. Characters I was meant to care about coming out of the woodwork, convoluted alibis and complicated evidence. I really found the end messy and unnecessary and added way too many complicated sub plots I struggled to follow.

But up until the last quarter I really enjoyed this..

4 stars

Joel Dicker puts himself into his stories in a fictional fashion. He did it in his bestseller “The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair” and he does it again here. In some way this book is the follow up to that one. This book brought his fictional self Marcus Goldman fame and money. He is now a well-known author. Unfortunately, he lost contact to his friend Harry Quebert whom he exposed in his book. But he made a friend in Sergeant Perry Gahalowood who was involved in the murder of Nola Kellergan. Marcus is still struggeling to find is place as a writer. He is still full of self-doubt and the fear of writer’s block. So it comes in handy that Gahalowood gets a tip that something was handled wrong in the ten year old case of Alaska Sanders. The murder was solved and the culprit is behind bars. But did they incarcerate the real killer? Marcus again becomes involved in a case about a murdered young woman which will lead to his new book.

It seems that readers are divided in Joel Dickers case. There are some who find his work pretentious and boring. And there are the others, like me, who enjoy his writing. For me, he has a light-footed style which makes it easy for me to follow him into his story. He tends to repetitions and over-explaining and he loves his flashbacks. Every time something from the past is told, we jump back in time and see the scene in real time. That gets a bit tedious after a while. That also makes the book a bit long and winding, like all his books are.

Dicker makes often references to his Harry Quebert book and another one, “The Baltimore Boys”. It is helpful to know the other ones but it is not necessary.

I enjoyed this book. I know about Joel Dickers flaws and I mostly can live with them. There was only one book “The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer” which I did not like that much for several reasons. It seems he found his way back into solid story telling. His characters are all flawed and he describes himself not too flattering, too, but still with some vanity. I and will wait patiently for his next one.

I found this an enjoyable read but was a bit disappointed by the ending which I felt was stretching things a bit.
A good crime novel where a police sergeant and a novelist seek to solve a crime of murder of a young women where potentially the convicted murder is innocent.
The book flips back to the events of 1999 and then forward to 2010 as the plot weaves between the various suspects and motives. I would have given 4 stars but felt the ending was less believable as the murder suspect is revealed.

Back in 2015, I read Joël Dicker’s book The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair, a story featuring two writers, Harry and his friend and mentee Marcus Goldman, each struggling to write a novel. It also documented Goldman’s attempts to solve a mystery surrounding the murder of a fifteen year old girl, Nola, more than thirty years earlier – a girl Harry had been close to. I found it to be a long, jumpy story full of highs and lows; there were elements I loved (typically the conversations between the two writers) and sections I found tortuously dull and hard to swallow (mainly revelations about the relationship between Harry and Nola). But it’s a book that, despite its flaws, has always stayed with me.

So, my attention was quickly grabbed when I spotted that the author had written what amounts to a follow-up novel. Here, Marcus is shown to have benefitted from his time spent with Harry, in as much as he’d written a very successful book telling the story of the investigation into Nola’s death. The year is now 2010, and two years have passed since the events of that time. But he hasn’t seen his close friend since. However, driving back from a short trip to Canada, Marcus plans a route that will take him through the small New England town where Harry had lived. He’s gone now, and nobody seems to know where he’s now living, but Marcus still has hope that he might just get lucky and spot Harry snooping around his old haunts.

There are a number of carry-over characters from the earlier book, most notably Sargent Perry Gahalowood, who’d befriended Marcus as they’d jointly sought to uncover the mystery of Nola’s death. Perry is to feature large here, as he and Marcus now become drawn into the mystery surrounding another murder: that of an attractive young woman called Alaska Sanders. The murder had occurred back in 1999, and Perry had been part of the investigative team, but current events have started to throw doubt on the reliability of the conclusions reached and, therefore, the resultant actions taken.

Once again, the author provides a whole group of passages I really like (even perhaps love) but also some elements I didn’t. The relationship between Marcus and Perry is brilliantly observed, and their conversations are, for me, the high points of this novel. There are even a few statements - touching on life, marriage, success and how events change you - that I highlighted in order that I might read them again, and probably keep, so poignant did I find them to be. But the re-investigation into the crime is a painfully drawn-out affair. This is a long book, getting on for six hundred pages, and there are many twists and turns – in truth, too many for me. Quite a few sections are finished with a ‘you won’t believe what happened next’ type statement. This highlights that yet another mysterious happening or discovery is about to be added to the pot.

There is something else I found a little off-putting, too, this being that writer Marcus seemed to be allowed almost equal status to policeman Perry in conducting the re-investigation. I’m no expert on American police procedure, but this felt distinctly off to me. So it’s this mix of the good, the bad, and the unlikely that I wrestled with throughout. And yet, as the book came to a close, I knew in my heart that I’d miss it and the characters in it, just as I had with the Harry Quebert book. This seems to be something of a conjuring trick that the author has managed to perfect.

Alaska Sanders, 21, was voted Miss New England in September 1998. Her ambition to become an actress, a film star, an ambition she had had since childhood, was assured. Then she abruptly gave up her life in Salem, Massachusetts, moved to a small town in New Hampshire with her unambitious, mummy’s boy, boyfriend, Walter, and got a job in a small gas station. And in April 1999 someone murdered her on a beach not far from town. The police quickly identified Walter as the prime suspect and his friend, Eric, as a possible accomplice, Walter killed himself and Eric was imprisoned for life. In 2010, Detective Sergeant Perry Gahalowood of the NH State Police receives evidence that forces him to reopen the case, covertly, at the order of his boss. Perry had previously worked with writer Marcus Goodman on a case which became Marcus’s second million selling book “The Truth About the Harry Quebert” Affair. The two set out to review the evidence, which opens up a whole shelf full of cans of worms.
This book follows on from the previous one, which has no direct impact here except for diverting Marcus from time to time. So this works as a standalone, although the Harry Quebert stuff is a bit of a distraction for the reader. The book leaps back and forward between 1998 and 2010 and is structured rather like a TV show, a character in 2010 starts talking about an earlier event and the scene then shifts to the enactment of the event, running in real time, then shifts back to 2010. I found this quite a neat trick but readers who don’t like flashbacks might not. The plot is very convoluted, as evidence throws suspicion on one character, then on different one, then exonerates someone, then turns out not to. Readers who like trying to solve the mystery (as I do) will find this a pleasant challenge. I confess I did not identify the killer until forced to reevaluate my suspicions, so at the same time as Marcus and just behind Perry. The story was originally published in French but the translation is excellent. It is around 560 pages and quite repetitive in places.

Advance Copy Review

I'm a huge fan of Joel Dicker's The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair so was incredibly excited to see this latest offering which features the same protaganist. That said I did go in with a little trepidation as I didn't want to be disappointed! I needn't have worried.

The keep-you-guessing-til-the-end plot, peppered with many twists along the way, kept me hooked throughout and it was a thrill that some recurring characters made an appearance (no spoilers here). A knowledge of previous works featuring Marcus Goldman are helpful, ultimately this book works without that context and stands alone as just a brilliant mystery and one I can happily recommend!

This gripping book is like an onion, more layers just keep appearing! It refers back to the author’s previous book, The Harry Quebert Affair, and although I have read it I couldn’t remember much about it so it’s not essential to read the books in order. The book perfectly encapsulates small town life in America, and switching between the 2 time lines is straightforward to follow. I thoroughly enjoyed this book from start to finish and definitely recommend it.

Joel Dicker’s The Alaska Sanders Affair is an intricate mystery that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.

Dicker weaves together multiple timelines and narrative voices, while this approach may initially seem daunting, it quickly becomes clear. As the reader delves deeper into the mystery, the puzzle pieces begin to fall into place, revealing a web of interconnected events and hidden truths.

One of the novel’s greatest strengths is its ability to keep the reader guessing. Dicker skillfully employs misdirection and red herrings, leading the audience down unexpected paths and constantly questioning their assumptions.

The novel features a diverse cast of characters, each with their own unique perspectives and motivations. From the enigmatic Alaska Sanders to the determined author and detective investigating her disappearance, the characters bring depth and complexity to the story.

I had read that Joel Dicker's "The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair" was a huge sensation in America, but never got around to reading it. That hole in my reading lead to some serious confusion as "The Alaska Sanders Affair" begins in an autobiographical fashion by the fictional writer of TTATHQA. Once I had worked out that Marcus Goldman was the fictional writer created by Joel Dicker to act as autobiographical chronicler I was off and running.
The style brilliantly draws you into the narrative, the biographical details of the author and his friends interspersed with what is presented as a real investigation, gives his characters real depth. The murder of the beautiful, and much loved Alaska Sanders is reinvestigated 11 years after her supposed murderer was imprisoned. There is a disquieting ebb and flow of information divulged, and until the final pages there is still enough lingering doubt as to who the real murderer was.
A comprehensive realisation of small town life, where superficially everything is perfect, yet hidden below the surface guilty secrets lie.
If I have one criticism it would be that there were probably too many layers as the onion was unpealed. Probably, a couple of blind alleys fewer would not have detracted from the big reveal. The slowly building tension began to seep out a little too early.
However, this is a minor criticism. Overall a hugely satisfying read.

Having sold a lot of copies of The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair in my time, I was curious to read Joel Dicker's work. This is a sequel to Harry Quebert, but you don't have to have read it to make sense of this book. The writer, Marcus Goldman returns to the small town where he helped solve his previous cold case, to be presented with another. Eleven years previously, a young woman called Alaska Sanders was murdered. The case was solved within two days, only now, new evidence has come to light which means that the case must be re-investigated. This is a fairly traditional whodunit with a number of twists and turns and more than a few red herrings. A fairly entertaining read but one in which you, as the reader are required to suspend a fair amount of disbelief for everything to work out in the end.

A decade ago, Alaska Sanders was found brutally murdered on the shore of a lake near the small town where she lived with her boyfriend. Two men were arrested, one died in custody and the other pleaded guilty, A new killing seems to reference the case.. Marcus Goldman, celebrity author of the Truth about the Harry Quebert affair teams up with his friend Sergeant Gahalowood and starts to tease out the threads. Its a clever and complex plot with plenty of red-herrings and dead -ends - a more than competent police procedural.. the frequent referencing of the previous book and the extent of Goldman's talent and fame do make you wonder if Joel Dicker has a somewhat inflated self-image.

I really enjoyed this book! I look forward to reading other books by this author. There were so many twists in this book I didn’t see coming. But then again I rarely can figure books out. I would definitely recommend this book