It's 615 pages long.
It's a murder mystery, but also a book about writing and the difficulties of writing.
It's Dicker's second novel. The narrator, New Yorker Marcus Goldman, is a young writer whose first novel made him rich and famous.
He's subsequently developed writer's block, and his publisher is chasing him for the other two books he's contracted to write.
Goldman goes to his old mentor, Harry Quebert, for help. Quebert's early book, The Origin of Evil, written 33 years earlier, remains one of America's best sellers.
The body of a 15-year-old girl, Nola, is discovered on Quebert's property in New Hampshire after 33 years.
Quebert had been deeply in love with Nola, but kept their love hushed up because she was underage.
The mysteries begin, mysteries so complex each time something resolves, something else unresolves.
Dicker originally intended to write solely about the two authors. Fortunately the murder mystery arrived and took over, and is what makes it so readable.
There are twists and turns galore. What's not to like?
Harry's writing advice to Marcus is seldom anything to get excited about, and his views on love aren't much better.
The extracts from the famous Origin of Evil make you wonder what all the fuss is about. Dicker constructs a convoluted plot, but his style doesn't always match this, especially in the dialogue.
Some of the characters are stereotypes, such as Goldman's Jewish mother, but her very funny monologues about getting her son married so he can beget children make up for this.
Goldman tells the story, along with several other characters, and sometimes some anonymous narrator arrives to fill in gaps Goldman couldn't possibly know about.
The chapter numbers, for no apparent reason, go backwards, even though the story is progressing forwards.
In spite of the things that didn't appeal, I read this lengthy book in three bursts over two days, which says more than a little about Dicker's ability to keep his readers engaged.
Mike Crowl is a Dunedin writer, musician and composer.
