The Alaska Sanders Affair

July 22, 2024
Author and sleuth Marcus Goldman returns (after The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair) to help his friend, Sgt. Perry Gahalowood, rectify a decade-old miscarriage of justice in Dicker’s overstuffed latest. In April 1999, a young woman named Alaska Sanders was found dead on the edge of a New Hampshire lake. Soon afterward, a suspect named Walter Carrey was brought in for questioning. He confessed to killing Alaska with his friend, Eric Donovan, and then grabbed a police officer’s gun, shooting both the officer and himself. Gahalowood, who was leading the Sanders investigation at the time, gets a shock when, in 2010, Goldman finds an anonymous note among the possessions of Gahalowood’s late wife insisting that Carrey and Donovan weren’t Alaska’s killers. The discovery launches Goldman and Gahalowood into a new investigation, which dredges up questions about Gahalowood’s deceased spouse and Alaska’s true identity. In addition to juggling timelines and locations—plus a dizzying barrage of red herrings—Dicker spends an inordinate amount of time on Goldman’s inconsequential romantic life, which does little to usher the already-busy story along. By the time Dicker brings this lumbering mystery to a close, readers will be more exhausted than satisfied.

August 1, 2024
Eleven years after the 1999 murder of aspiring actress Alaska Sanders in New Hampshire, acclaimed young novelist Marcus Goldman spearheads a new investigation into what had been an open-and-shut case. Goldman, whose first novel "propelled [him] to the summit of American letters," has some experience in criminal matters. After a long-missing teenage girl's body was exhumed from the garden of his close friend and distinguished mentor Harry Quebert, he proved the man's innocence. Writing about that case had cured his writer's block. Now, teaming up with his tormented friend Perry Gahalowood, the cop who oversaw the Sanders investigation, he quickly determines that the two troublesome young men convicted of Alaska's lakeside killing didn't do it and sets out to find the guilty party--all the while collecting material for his next opus. Swiss author Dicker's breakthrough, The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair (2014), was a procedural in extremis; this sequel likewise pores over details both revealing and extraneous, contains flashbacks within flashbacks (everyone gets a back story), and sometimes leaves the main story altogether. Alaska is a blank page until more than two-thirds of the novel have gone by. Dicker knows how to spice up his narrative with, among other things, Goldman's three failed romances and teasing appearances by the missing Harry Quebert, who leaves mysterious notes inside little statues of seagulls. But, perhaps not helped by the translator, the dialogue is as flat as a pancake. A megamystery that gives new meaning to the termpainstaking.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2024
This series' popular, labyrinthian investigations are narrated by fictional best-selling author Marcus Goldman, whose quests for personal resolution lend compelling depth. Ten years ago, Perry Gahalowood, Goldman's best friend and colleague from The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair (2014), arrested Alaska Sanders' boyfriend, Walter Carrey, for her murder. Carrey's guilt was seemingly proven when he shot Gahalowood's partner and himself after confessing. Now, in 2010, Gaholowood's wife's death exposes devastating secrets she uncovered about misconduct in the Sanders case. Goldman and Gahalowood pair up again to resolve all doubts about the beguiling convenience store clerk's murder. Unfortunately, they connect Sanders' case to more deaths: the case's crime scene investigator's suicide, Carrey's murder-suicide, and the murder of Alaska's pageant rival. The only connection is Alaska Sanders, but they'll dig through layers of secret liaisons, masterful manipulation, and a gloriously elaborate cover-up to find the killer who kicked off the domino effect. Goldman's latest investigation is a classic gumshoe whodunit, with satisfying attention paid to the series-defining disappearance of Harry Quebert.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.