The Alaska Sanders Affair: A Riveting Murder Mystery Unraveling Secrets and Ghosts from the Past in a Small New Hampshire Town―Get Lost in the Pages of This Captivating Summer Read (Marcus Goldman, 3) Hardcover – September 17, 2024

The Alaska Sanders Affair by superior novelist Joel Dicker is just that. This far-flung, twisty, unpredictable, and fascinating novel is outrageously excellent. The writing is superb. The characters are vividly drawn. The procedural aspects are true to life, and the settings abound with cinematic imagery. Joe Dicker is one of my top three novelists. This book is stunning and wonderful, and, most of all, it is a book that begs to be read over an extremely short period. That says a lot because the book is lengthy, but every page is a delight. I recommend that readers finish this outstanding novel and check the writer's backlist. My only concern is that I must wait for Mr Dicker to write another book. This is one of the best mysteries I have read, and I am sure that after you read the Alaska Sanders Affair, you will agree with me wholeheartedly.

The third of three books related to the novel The True Story Harry Quebert. This one focuses on the murder of Alaska, a beautiful girl who wanted to be an actress. A key characteristic of Dicker's writing is that he manages to hold your interest throughout the book with all he twists and turns he writes, making it difficult for us to know how the book will end.

A murder is committed and quickly laid to rest with an arrest and conviction. 13 years later due to a variety of extenuating circumstances the case is reopened and one of the same original detectives heads up the investigation. Then this blooming onion of a mystery is peeled back over the course of 500+ pages to reveal layers of treachery and deceit by practically every one of the previously involved witnesses which totally redirects the focus of the investigation and lays bare the seamy underbelly of the cozy town's citizens. Sounds interesting but it isn't. It’s instead grueling because the number of people trying to cover up their past regrettable actions and decisions become such a repetitive motif that the story loses its momentum as it calls into question the credibility of the characters to such an extent that they simply become chess pieces instead of real (fictional) people. The novel is such an extended McGuffin that it all becomes meaningless sentences on a page, almost like a way to bulk up the page count.That’s the big beef. Then there were numerous others. The writing at times felt stilted and unnatural. Same for a number of the personal relationships that are explored in the course of the story. And then there’s the mysterious Quebert. As a first time reader to this 3rd in a series I felt totally mystified by the constant insertions and apparent significance of this character and the damn “...Harry Quebert..." book. It seemed like a side show distraction because this person really didn’t have much of anything to do with the murder mystery at hand. It actually reinforced the flighty, flaky nature of the main protagonist who was already on thin ice with me for a variety of his tics one of which I’ll single out was his constantly jumping in his car to tool off to various points up and down the east coast (from Maine to Miami) from his home base like he was hopping into his car to go to the grocery store. These trips were mainly just him following weird, little tangents that had become bees in his bonnet.Then we get to the ending, finally. It’s a protracted regurgitation of the entire novel this time with a completely different spin which when piled upon the numerous different spin cycles preceding it made my eyes glaze over and had me thinking just say whatever you’re going to say and make it end. Once the big reveal is made at this point all the other additional explanatory stuff really is non-icing on the cake.

Badly written, contrived plotting and generally not worth reading, shredded it for the fireplace.

This was my first foray into the work of this acclaimed author, though I haven't read Harry Quebert or his other novels. Despite the recommendation, I'm left with a decidedly negative impression. The protagonist, Marcus Goldman, was gratingly unlikeable, a character I actively rooted against. Worse, the plot strained credulity to the breaking point. Over a tedious 500+ pages, the story relentlessly peeled back layers of deceit, implicating nearly every witness and constantly yanking the investigation in new, often illogical directions. The supposedly tranquil town's dark underbelly felt less like a revelation and more like a contrived plot device. Both the dialogue and the disjointed ending left me cold, and the sheer number of supporting characters, each burdened with their own secrets, bogged down the narrative, making the journey to the lackluster ending feel like a slog. A disappointing 2/5

I gave up after about 50 pages. How on EARTH did this even get publihed???

This book was well written however there was just too much going on with it. The plot was implausible. The ending was as if the writer could not come up with a viable suspect. Disappointing.

Joël Dicker is one of my favorite authors. I've read all his published books, including the Marcus Goldman series, and loved them. "The Alaska Sanders Affair" by Joël Dicker is the third installment in the Marcus Goldman series, and it not only meets but surpasses the bar set by the previous books.The uniqueness of the book lies in the combination of the murder mystery and the vivid description of Marcus Goldman's world. The story is full of interesting observations, some cynical and critical, about the world of literature, success, and the fear of failure. The book starts slow, but the pace picks up around the middle. Overall, I enjoyed the book immensely and highly recommend it.