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’Âge 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’Âge 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. 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.