The 3 best books by the wonderful Joël Dicker

Come, vidi, vici. No better phrase to coin what happened to Joel Dicker in its overwhelming irruption on the world literary scene. You could think of that marketing product that pays off. But those of us who are used to reading books of all kinds recognize that this young author has something. Dicker is a master of flash back as a total resource.

Plots divided into their precise pieces, comings and goings between past, present and future to trap us in the confusion of its meticulous spider web. Sometimes we move forward to discover the murderer. At other times we return until we find the reasons that led him to commit the crime. You cannot justify who he kills, but you can understand why he kills. At least that's how it happens in Joel Dicker's novels. The strange empathy with the antihero.

Let's add to it characters that dazzle, psychological profiles deeply affected by the wounds of living, journeys of those who carry the heavy trail of the soul. In the end, disturbing proposals that assail us with the urgent sensation of the most inescapable doom, with its share of justice in some disconcerting moral aspect.

Family dilemmas or sinister events, problems and serious consequences. Life as an abrupt introduction to hell that can come from full happiness.

Paragraph… Here is a recent case for dicker addicts with the first two installments of the Marcus Goldman series:

Addicted to Dicker...

Top 3 Recommended Novels by Joël Dicker

The Baltimore Book

A wonderful story (I can't find a more accurate adjective) about family, love, resentment, competition, destiny ... A novel at various times to present the future of a peculiar American dream, in the style of the movie American Beauty but with a deeper plot, blacker and extended in time.

We start by getting to know the Goldman from Baltimore and Goldman from Montclair families. The Baltimore have prospered more than the Montclairs. Marcus, the son of the Montclairs adores his cousin Hillel, admires his aunt Anita and idolizes his uncle Saúl. Marcus spends the whole year looking forward to reuniting with his cousin in Baltimore during any vacation period. Enjoying that feeling of belonging to a model, prestigious and wealthy family becomes a heavy slab for him.

Under the auspices of that idyllic family nucleus, increased with the adoption of Woody, a troubled boy converted into that new home, the three boys agree to that eternal friendship typical of youth. During their idealistic years, the Goldman cousins ​​enjoy their unbreakable pact, they are good guys who defend each other and always find good causes difficult to tackle.

The loss of Scott Neville, a sick little friend of a family in the neighborhood anticipates all the subsequent tragedy to come, "the Drama." The boy's sister joins the Goldman group, becomes one more. But the problem is that all three cousins ​​love her. For his part, Gillian, the father of Alexandra and the late Scott, finds in the Goldman cousins ​​a support to cope with the death of a son.

They made their handicapped son feel alive, they encouraged him to live beyond his room and the medical assistance that made him prostrate to his bed. They allowed him to do that crazy thing for their state. Gillian's defense of the cousins ​​led to her divorce from a mother who could not understand how the three Goldmans had turned Scott's pitiful existence into a full life, despite the fatal outcome.

Perfection, love, success, admiration, prosperity, ambition, tragedy. Sensations that are anticipating the reasons for the Drama. The Goldman cousins ​​are growing, Alexandra continues to dazzle them all, but she has already chosen Marcus Goldman. The frustration of the other two cousins ​​begins to be a latent reason for disagreement, never made explicit. Marcus feels like he has betrayed the group. And Woody and Hillel know themselves to be losers and betrayed.

At University, Woody confirms his worth as a professional athlete and Hillel stands out as a great law student. Egos begin to create edges in a friendship that, despite this, remains unbreakable, even if only in an essence of their souls, intoxicated by circumstances.

The Goldman stepbrothers begin an underground fight while Marcus, a budding writer, tries to find his place among them. The arrival of the Goldman cousins ​​to the University is a breaking point for everyone.

Baltimore parents suffer from empty nest syndrome. The father, Saúl Goldman, envies Gillian, who seems to have usurped the parental rights of the boys thanks to their higher social and economic status and their contacts. Such a sum of egos and ambitions leads to the Drama, in the most unexpected way, presented in brushstrokes in those comings and goings from the past to the present, a Drama that will take everything ahead as far as the Baltimore Goldmans are concerned.

In the end, Marcus Goldman, the writer, along with Alexandra, they are the only survivors of the band of those idealistic and extremely happy boys. He, Marcus, knows that he must turn the history of his cousins ​​and of the Baltimore black on white in order to free himself from their shadows and recover Alexandra in the process; and thus perhaps, open a future without guilt.

It is what has broken and longed for happiness, it must have a sublimation to leave it in the past, it needs a final repair. This is the chronological structure of the book, although Joel Dicker it does not present it this way. As he did in "The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair", the comings and goings between present and past scenarios becomes a constant necessary to maintain the fascinating intrigue that can explain a present of doubts, melancholy and a certain hope.

What was of the Baltimore Goldman is the mystery that drives the entire book, along with the present of a lonely Marcus Goldman that we need to know if he will come out of the past and find a way to get Alexandra back.

The Book of Baltimore

The truth about the Harry Quebert case

Sometimes, while reading this lengthy novel, you wonder if knowing the research on the past case of the murder of Nola Kellergan it can give so much that you can't stop reading it night after night.

A fifteen-year-old died in the summer of 1975, it was a sweet girl in love with a retired writer in search of inspiration with whom she decided to run away from home. Shortly after leaving home with the intention not to return, she was murdered under strange circumstances.

That young woman had her little (or not so little) hidden secrets that now seem of paramount importance to uncover what happened on August 30, 1975, the afternoon in which Nola left the life that beats in Aurora, the town of La plot.

Years later, with the investigation already closed in false without guilty, incontestable clues point to Harry Quebert, her lover. The romantic forbidden love they shared is made public to each other's outrage, surprise, and disgust.

Harry Quebert is now a famous writer for his great work: "The origins of evil", which he published after that impossible love parenthesis, and is retired in the same Aurora house he occupied during that strange summer of retirement that became an anchor that would hold him to the past forever.

While Harry is imprisoned pending final sentence for murder, his student Marcus goldman, with him shared a peculiar but intense friendship between mutual admiration and the special connection as writers both, he settles in the house to tie up the loose ends and get the freedom of an innocent Harry, in whom he trusts with absolute faith.

In that cause to free his friend he finds the inspiration to undertake his new book after a monumental creative jam, he prepares to put the whole truth about the Harry Quebert case black on white.

Meanwhile, you reader, you are already inside, you are Marcus at the helm of that investigation that unites testimonies of the past and the present, and where the lagoons in which they all dived lost in their moment are beginning to be discovered. The secret for the novel to hook you is that suddenly you see that your heart also beats between the inhabitants of Aurora, with the same anxiety as the rest of the inhabitants puzzled by what is happening.

If you add to that the mysterious flashbacks from the present to that summer in which everything changed, as well as the multiple twists and turns of the investigation, the fact that the story has you in suspense makes complete sense. As if that were not enough, under the investigation of the case, after the forced mimicry that you suffer with the environment and the locals of Aurora, some strange but premonitory chapters appear, memories shared between Marcus and Harry when they were both students and teachers.

Small chapters that link to that juicy particular relationship that sparks ideas about writing, life, success, work ... and they announce the great secret, which transcends murder, Nola's love, life in Aurora and becomes the final stunt that leaves you speechless.

The truth about the Harry Quebert case

The riddle of room 622

Once the last page of this new book is over, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I consider that the case of room 622 extends along the same lines as the Harry Quebert case, surpassing it at times when the novel speaks of the writer, of the Joel Dicker immersed in the storyteller's dilemmas mimicked in the first instance as the first protagonist. A protagonist who lends the essence of his being to all the other participants.

The onset of Bernard de Fallois, the publisher who made Joel the literary phenomenon that he is, elevates these metaliterary foundations to a proper entity that is within the novel because that is how it is written. But that ends up escaping the sense of the plot, because it becomes larger than what is properly related despite being a tiny part of its space.

Is the familiar magic of Dicker, capable of presenting several plans that we access going up and down stairs. From the cellars where the messy motives of the writer are stored to fill pages before the only possible end, death; to the spectacular stage where those strange muffled applause arrive, those of the readers who turn pages with an unpredictable cadence, with the hubbub of words that resonate among thousands of shared imaginary.

We start with a book that is never written, or at least parked, about Bernad, the missing publisher. A love broken by the inescapable power of the words engaged in the plot of a novel. A plot that rambles between the unbridled imagination of an author who presents characters from his world and from his imagination, between trompe l'oeils, anagrams and above all tricks such as that of the novel's essential protagonist: Lev.

Undoubtedly Lev lives more lives than anyone of the rest of the characters summoned. around the crime in room 622. And in the end the crime ends up being the excuse, the trivial, almost accessory at times, a common thread that only becomes relevant when the plot resembles a crime novel. For the rest of the time the world goes by around a hypnotic Lev even when he is not there.

The final composition is much more than a crime novel. Because Dicker always has that fractional pretense of making us see literary mosaics of life. Destructuring to maintain tension but also to be able to make us see the vagaries of our lives, written with those same unintelligible scripts sometimes but with full meaning if the complete mosaic is observed.

Except that at times that almost messianic desire to rule over all life made into a novel and shake it up like an ingenious cocktail is dangerous. Because in a chapter, during a scene, a reader may lose focus ...

It is a matter of putting a but. And it is also a matter of always expecting so much from a great bestseller with such a very personal style. Be that as it may, it cannot be denied that that first person in whom everything is narrated, with the addition of representing the author himself, has won us over from the first moment.

Then there are the famous twists, better achieved than in The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer although below the for me his masterpiece "The Book of the Baltimore". Without forgetting the juicy embroidery, woven as accessories by a wise and pragmatic Dicker in search of more hooks in the plot.

I am referring to that kind of humanistic and brilliant introspection that links aspects as disparate as destiny, the transience of everything, romantic love versus routine, ambitions and the drives that move them from deep within...

In the end, it must be recognized that, like good old Lev, we are all actors in our own lives. Only none of us come from a family of established actors: the Levovitches, always ready for glory.

The riddle of room 622

Other Recommended Joel Dicker Books

A wild animal

As soon as it passes through my hands, I will give a good account of this novel by Joel Dicker. But we can now echo his new plot. As always a woman, or sometimes her ghost, on which the plot pivots. This way we never know if we are close to one of her initial proposals or if things are more towards the slightly decaffeinated Stephanie Mailer... Everything will be read and here we will account for everything.

On July 2, 2022, two criminals are preparing to rob a major jewelry store in Geneva. An incident that is far from being a common robbery. Twenty days earlier, in a luxurious development on the shores of Lake Geneva, Sophie Braun is preparing to celebrate her fortieth birthday. Her life smiles at her: she lives with her family in a mansion surrounded by forests, but her idyllic world is about to shake. Her husband is entangled in her little secrets.

Her neighbor, a police officer with an impeccable reputation, has become obsessed with her and spies on her down to the most intimate details. And a mysterious marauder gives her a gift that puts her life in danger. Several trips to the past, far from Geneva, will be necessary to find the origin of this diabolical intrigue from which no one will emerge unscathed.

A thriller with an overwhelming pace and suspense, which reminds us why, since The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair, Joël Dicker has been a publishing phenomenon throughout the world, with more than twenty million readers.

The Alaskan Sanders case

In the Harry Quebert series, closed with this case of Alaska Sanders, there is a diabolical balance, a dilemma (I understand that especially for the author himself). Because in the three books the plots of the cases to be investigated coexist in parallel with that vision of the writer Marcus Goldman who plays at being himself Joel dicker within each of his novels.

And it happens that, for a series of suspense novels: "The Harry Quebert Affair", "The Baltimore Book" and "The Alaska Sanders Affair", the most brilliant ends up being the one that most closely adheres to the intrigue itself. around the life of Marcus, that is, "The Baltimore Book."

I think Joel Dicker knows this. Dicker knows that the ins and outs of the life of the budding writer and his evolution to the already world-renowned author captivate the reader to a greater extent. Because echoes resonate, ripples spread in the waters between reality and fiction, between the Marcus that is presented to us and the real author who seems to leave a large part of his soul and the learning of him as the extraordinary narrator that he is.

And of course, that more personal line had to continue advancing in this new installment on the fatalities of Alaska Sanders... We thus returned to a greater closeness with the original work, with that poor girl murdered in the Harry Quebert case. And then Harry Quebert had to be brought back to the cause, too. From the beginning of the plot you can already sense that good old Harry is going to make an appearance at any moment...

The thing is that for fans of Joel Dicker (myself included) it is difficult to enjoy this game between reality and fiction of the author and his alter ego to the same or greater extent than when the Baltimore drama takes place. Because as the author himself quotes, repair is always pending and it is what moves the most introspective part of the writer turned researcher.

But the high levels of emotion (understood in narrative tension and pure, more personal emotionality when empathizing with Marcus or Joel) do not reach in this case of Alaska Sanders what was achieved with the delivery of the Goldmans of Baltimore. I insist that even so, everything that Dicker writes about Marcus in his own mirror is pure magic, but knowing the above it seems that something more intensity is longed for.

As for the plot that supposedly justifies the novel, the investigation of the death of Alaska Sanders, what is expected of a virtuoso, sophisticated turns that hook and deceive us. Perfectly outlined characters capable of justifying in their natural creation any reaction to the different changes of direction that events take.

The typical "nothing is what it seems" comes into play in the case of Dicker and for his Alaska Sanders elemental substance. The author brings us closer to the psyche of each character to talk about daily survival that ends in catastrophe. Because beyond the aforementioned appearances, everyone escapes their hells or lets themselves be carried away by them. Buried passions and evil versions of the best neighbor.

Everything conspires in a perfect storm that in turn generates the perfect murder like a game of masks where each person transfigures their miseries.

In the end, as with the Baltimores, it can be understood that the Alaska Sanders case survives perfectly as an independent novel. And that is another of Dicker's marked capabilities.

Because putting yourself in Marcus's shoes without having the background of his life is like being able to be God by writing, to approach different people with the naturalness of someone who has just met someone and is discovering aspects of their past, without major disruptive aspects. to immerse yourself in the plot.

As so many other times, if I have to say something but to bring Dicker down from the narrative heavens of the suspense genre, I would point to aspects that are squeaky, like the defective printer with which the famous "I know what you've done" is written. and that coincidentally serves to point to the alleged murderer.

Or the fact that Samantha (don't worry, you'll meet her) remembers a last phrase from Alaska that certainly wasn't great in terms of relevance to being remembered. Little things that might even be superfluous or could be presented in another way...

But come on, despite that point of slight dissatisfaction for not reaching the level of the Baltimore, the Alaska Sanders case has you trapped without being able to let go.

The Alaska Sanders Affair by Joel Dicker

The disappearance of Stephanie Mailer

Dickër's ability to deconstruct the chronology of a plot while keeping the reader perfectly positioned in each of the temporal settings is worth studying. It is as if Dickër knew about hypnotism, or psychiatry, and applied everything to his novels for the final enjoyment of the reader hooked by the different pending issues like octopus tentacles.

On this new occasion we return to the pending accounts, to the issues of a recent past in which the characters surviving that time have much to hide or to finally learn about the truth. And that is where another truly remarkable aspect of this author comes into play.

It is about playing with the subjective perception of its characters regarding the overwhelming objectivity that is making its way as the final story is composed. A kind of symmetrical reading in which the reader can look at the character and a reflection that changes as the story progresses. The closest thing to magic that literature can offer us.

On July 30, 1994 everything begins (what has been said, the formula of a past date marked in red, such as the day of the drama of the baltimore or the murder of Nola Kellergar from the Harry Quebert case) We know that reality is one, that after the death of the family of the mayor of Orphea together with Samuel Paladin's wife there can only be one truth, one motivation, one unequivocal reason. And delusional of us at times we seem to know that objective side of things.

Until the story unfolds, moved by those magical characters so empathetic that Joel Dicker creates. Twenty years later Jesse Rosemberg is about to celebrate his retirement as a police officer. The resolution of the macabre case of July 94 still resonates as one of his great successes. Until Stephanie Mailer wakes up in Rosemberg and in her partner Derek Scott (the other one in charge of elucidating the famous tragedy) some sinister doubts that over the passage of so many years cause shocking doubts.

But Stephanie Mailer disappears leaving them halfway, with the incipient bitterness of the biggest mistake of her career ... From that moment, you can imagine, present and past are advancing in that masquerade on the other side of the mirror, while the direct and frank gaze of the truth it is sensed in half light on the other side of the mirror. It is a look that is directed directly at you, as a reader.

And until you discover the face of truth you will not be able to stop reading. While it is true that the aforementioned resource of flash backs and the destructuring of the story are once again the protagonists of the plot, this time it gives me the impression that this search for overcoming previous novels, at times we end up sinking in a pandemonium of potential criminals who are being discarded with a certain impression of dizzying resolution.

The perfect novel does not exist. And the quest for twists and turns can bring more confusion than storytelling glory. In this novel part of the great appeal of Dicker is sacrificed, that immersion more…. How to say it…, humanist, that contributed greater doses of emotion for a more tasty empathic implication in the case of Harry Quebert or the hand of the Baltimore. Maybe it's my thing and other readers prefer that dizzying run between scenes and possible murderers with a string of murders behind them that you laugh at any serial criminal.

However, when I found myself finishing the book and sweating as if it were Jesse himself or his partner Dereck, I thought that if rhythm prevailed it was necessary to submit to it and the experience was finally gratifying with those little bitter lees of good wine too exposed to the risks of the search for the great reserve.

The disappearance of Stephanie Mailer

The last days of our fathers

As the first novel it was not bad, not bad at all. The problem is that he recovered for the cause after the success of the Harry Quebert case, and the jump back was noticed something. But it is still a good, highly entertaining novel.

Summary: The first novel of the «planetary phenomenon» Joël Dicker, winner of the Geneva Writers' Prize. A perfect combination of a war plot of espionage, love, friendship and a deep reflection on the human being and his weaknesses, through the vicissitudes of group F of the SOE (Special Operation Executive), a unit of the British secret services in charge of training young Europeans for resistance during WWII.

Unforgettable characters, an exhaustive documentation about a little known episode of the Second World War and the fledgling talent of a very young Dicker, who later will be consecrated with the worldwide literary phenomenon The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair.

The last days of our fathers
5/5 - (57 votes)

2 comments on “The 3 best books by the wonderful Joël Dicker”

  1. Baltimore, the best?
    Not only me, but most readers (you only have to see opinions on Goodreads and pages of recognized prestige), we think that it is the opposite. Worst. By far.

    Reply
    • For me the best light years away. matter of taste
      And on many other platforms "Los Baltimores" is at the same or higher level of valuation than others. It's not just me anymore then...

      Reply

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.