‘The Alaska Sanders Affair’ by Joel Dicker

Published by Quercus Books,
12 September 2024.
ISBN: 978-1-5294-3381-4 (HB)
Translated from the French by Robert Bonnono

Alaska Sanders was a beautiful young woman, having some success in local beauty contests and hoping for a career in acting.  She was murdered by a lake near Mount Pleasant, the small town in which she lived.  There were two suspects, one (Walter Carrey) died in custody and the other, Eric Donovan, pleaded guilty to murder and has so far been in jail for 11 years.  Then another woman is murdered, and Eric’s sister, Lauren, thinks that this may support her belief that he is innocent.

The author Marcus Goldman, whose book ‘The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair’ has brought him much success, is struggling with the idea of its being made into a film and sets out to find the person in the title, Harry.  Marcus visits his friend Sergeant Perry Gaholowood, whom he had met while researching for the book and who had been involved in the Alaska Sanders case.  He is very fond of Perry and his family and is deeply shocked when Perry’s wife, Helen, dies suddenly.  In trying to understand what Helen was doing in the time before her death he finds some snippets of evidence which seems to relate to Alaska’s death. Gradually Marcus and Perry unpick the various strands of this cold case.

The book has the feel of an autobiography and is structured to lead the reader back and forth through the years.  The characters (of which there are a number) are introduced without overloading the story line.  They are well drawn with definite roles to play, even when not actually involved in the investigation.  As Marcus journeys back and forth through the years and drives back and forth through the various landscapes, small, disconnected memories are unearthed and fitted together, existing evidence is re-evaluated, other crimes are revealed and, gradually but inexorably, the hunt for the truth moves forward.

The story is intertwined with Marcus’s own search for Harry Quebert and also, now that he has achieved such success, for his own way forward.  The time travel is deftly handled and the overall plot leads the reader on.  It is a long book but presented in a way that makes it easy to keep track of the investigation, with shortish dated sections which encourage the reader to read just a bit more.  The book about Harry Quebert is referred to, but it is not necessary to have read it to follow this story, though readers of this book may well be encouraged to do so. 
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Reviewer: Jo Hesslewood
Other books by this author: Marcus Goldman series:  The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair, The Baltimore Boys, The Alaska Sanders Affair.  Standalone Novels: The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer, The Enigma of Room 622, Un Animal Sauvage. 

Joël Dicker was born in Geneva in 1985, where he studied Law. His first Book The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair was nominated for the Prix Goncourt and won the Grand Prix du Roman de l'Académie Française and the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens. It soon became a worldwide success publishing in 42 countries and selling more than 3.5 million copies. In the UK it was a Times number one bestseller, and was chosen for the Richard and Judy Book Club as well as Simon Mayo's Radio 2 Book Club. His latest book is The Disapperance of Stephanie Mailer. 

Jo Hesslewood.  Crime fiction has been my favourite reading material since as a teenager I first spotted Agatha Christie on the library bookshelves.  For twenty-five years the commute to and from London provided plenty of reading time.  I am fortunate to live in Cambridge, where my local crime fiction book club, Crimecrackers, meets at Heffers Bookshop .  I enjoy attending crime fiction events and currently organise events for the Margery Allingham Society.