Somerset, a small seaside town in New Hampshire, U.S.A., is the setting for one of the most anticipated novels of 2014. Released in May this year, Joel Dicker's The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair has received mostly ecstatic notices across the globe. Dicker, a Swiss national who writes in French, first tasted success in France where the book has been a bestseller and on the short list for the prestigious Prix Goncourt. It also became the talk of the 2012 Frankfurt Book Fair where rights were sold in 32 languages.
Marcus Goldman, the author of a successful debut novel, is suffering from writer's block. Under tremendous pressure from his publisher, Goldman goes to Somerset to get help from his mentor Harry Quebert, a literary lion in his own right. While in Somerset, the body of a teenager, Nora, who has been missing for more than 30 years is found buried in Quebert's garden and he is charged with the girl's murder. It turns out that Quebert had had an affair with Nora and she was his muse for the book that made his reputation. Convinced of Quebert's innocence, Goldman decides to investigate and write a book about the affair.
The problem with books that receive so much hype is they often never live up to expectations, and this book is no exception. However, if you forget the hype and the literary comparisons to Nabakov and Philip Roth, this is still for the most part, a gripping whodunit. I tend to agree with the critic who compared Dicker to American mystery writer Harlen Coben whose Tell No One is one of the most gripping crime thrillers that I have read.
The area around Lake Naivasha in Kenya is the backdrop for Richard Crompton's Hell's Gate, the second in the series featuring the Maasai-warrior-turned-police-detective Mollel. He is banished from Nairobi for upsetting the powers that be to a small town adjoining the lake. The death of a worker in a horticultural farm leads Mollel into a web of intrigue that includes tribal wars in the wake of an extremely violent election, police corruption and the illegal trade in rhino horns. Full marks to Crompton, a former BBC correspondent, for creating the fascinating Mollel who has an internal conflict between his Maasai tradition and his current westernised lifestyle, and for capturing the allure of Kenya with all its simmering tensions.
In Tom Rob Smith's The Farm, London-based Daniel believes his parents are leading a quiet retired life in Sweden until, one day, he is informed by his father that his mother has been committed to a mental asylum. She escapes and seeks refuge with Daniel while trying to convince him about a conspiracy in rural Sweden that involves his father. Caught between parents, Daniel has to find out for himself what really happened.
With this psychological thriller, Smith successfully enters the territory of the big daddies of Nordic Noir with a story that unfolds like a collaboration between Alfred Hitchcock and Ingmar Bergman. I would also strongly recommend his earlier crime novels Child 44 and The Secret Speech, which are both set in Stalinist Russia.
In Herman Koch's Summer House With Swimming Pool ,the narrator Marc is an Amsterdam-based general practitioner, whose most famous patient has just died. The medical board is investigating Marc for negligence while the widow of the deceased accuses him of murder. The key to all that happened is the event that unfolded during a summer vacation that went horribly wrong. Herman Koch's unique take on man's baser instincts, which are often in conflict with conventional morality, will appeal to fans of Gillian Flynn, Patricia Highsmith and Barbara Vine.
Finally, a more conventional mystery set in Tokyo, Salvation Of A Saint. In Keigo Higashino's follow-up to his bestselling Devotion of Suspect X, a man is poisoned in his apartment. The prime suspect is his wife but the police cannot understand how she could have committed the murder when she was away visiting her parents. This is a classic locked-room puzzle combined with a police procedural as the detectives try to unravel the mystery with the help of a Physics Professor nicknamed Professor Galileo.
While there is already a Hindi adaptation of The Devotion of Suspect X in the works and given the recent success of the Malayalam film Drishyam, I won't be surprised if any of these novels inspire our film makers.
Gautam Padmanabhan is the CEO of a publishing company. He can be contacted at compulsivebrowser @gmail.com
