The Alaska Sanders Affair

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This was on the Wall Street Journal's list of best 2024 mysteries. So, despite my mediocre impressions of the two previous books I've read by Joël Dicker, I decided to give this one a try. This book is a sequel of sorts to The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair, which I read back in 2014, and (apparently) The Baltimore Boys (which I haven't read).

This book is set mostly in New Hampshire, with side trips to Maine and Massachusetts. Locations are a mixture of the fictional and real: Conway, Wolfeboro, Rochester, etc. (The "dangerous part of Rochester" earns a visit; I didn't even know Rochester had a "dangerous part", but I haven't been everywhere in the city.)

The "affair" is the grisly murder of the titular Alaska Sanders in 1999. She was pretty, a beauty pageant winner, an aspiring model/actress, but things don't work out: our first view of her is being a corpse on a lakeshore, being eaten by a bear.

Things get resolved quickly: one suspect is shot, another confesses and goes to prison for life. Swift New Hampshire justice!

Over a decade later, the book's narrator, author Marcus Goldman, visits the murder scene, and reunites with his cop buddy, Perry Galhalowood. But there's this one little detail unearthed that causes the murder investigation to be reopened, and we are off into a very twisty plot.

So thumbs up for the plot, which (I assume) is hole-free. That's a Dicker trademark. Also (as I've noted in the past): leaden, unrealistic dialog, plastic characters, soap-opera scenarios. As Marcus and Perry proceed, startling revelations pile up, each sending their attention in a different direction, to new suspects. ("Why didn't you tell us this before now?" seems to be said a lot.) I followed along.

I know: it's fiction. However, at a certain point the plot twists seemed too-conveniently contrived. There's a limit. By the end, my page-turning was driven by a mixture of "Sigh, what's gonna happen now?" and "Let's get this over with."

One NH-based plot point struck me: a murder confession is coerced by a threatened death penalty. But (in actual fact) New Hampshire has not executed a murderer since 1939. (Want to know more about Capital punishment in New Hampshire?) I thought this was an obvious botch by Dicker, but guess what? No spoilers, but by the end of the book I realized—maybe not!