Joël Dicker, a 'thriller' beast | The truth

Dicker stops in Spain on the launch tour of his eighth novel. As in all the previous ones, he claims to have written it “without a prior plan.” He does not want people to think that the absence of planning is a virtue or something extraordinary. He does not go too far and assures that “not having a plan is part of the pleasure of writing.”

There are five main characters in 'A Wild Animal', all connected to the robbery of a luxurious jewelry store in Geneva, meticulously planned to be executed in 420 seconds. Everyone struggles in a spider web that grows tighter around the planning and execution of the heist in which the good guys and the bad guys will converge.

A jealously guarded secret, as always in his novels, is once again the soul of the story and the driving force of this fiction. “We all have secrets, any human being has them,” recognizes Dicker for whom “literature is revealing secrets; generate that resonance that makes the reader question his own secrets.

It addresses another “big issue”, appearances, social masks, and the thin line between public and private life in which the well-off Braun couple moves, on which they build a complex narrative machinery in which another couple fits. , the Liégean, and a fifth character, 'La Fiera', a romantic crime wizard who will light the flame for the story to explode.

The Brauns, Sophie and Arpad, live in a sumptuous glass house in an elegant neighborhood on the outskirts of Geneva. His neighbors Greg and Karine live in a modest townhouse that does not fit into that luxurious and paradisiacal environment. “Its two settings are in conflict and express the tension of social classes that exists in the novel,” says the author of a fiction in which nothing is what it seems.

It is the second novel that is set in his native Geneva. «The city is another character. It is thought to be one of the capitals of the world, like London or Paris, but it only has 300,000 inhabitants »he points out.

the power of imagination

Unlike so many intrigue authors who talk and interact with police, forensics and even criminals, Dicker is not anchored in reality and encrypts everything to his powerful imagination. «I have not spoken with police to learn more about the techniques of investigating a robbery. “I'm not interested,” he says without a hint of petulance or superiority.

«I'm interested in intrigue. “It is not a strictly detective novel,” she says. «Reality can be inspiring, although fiction can generate reality. If something should be very clear, it is that a novel is fiction, an invention. An exercise of freedom that has something wild about it.

For Dicker, narrating is an act of “liberation and rebellion that is born from naturalness, from instinct,” says this thriller animal. “Literature is one of the great spaces of freedom,” he reiterates, “and we must be aware that it is something very valuable that must be defended,” he claims.

With 'The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair' (2013) Dicker hit the big time and rode the crest of the wave of success from which he has never come down. It was a global phenomenon that exploded in the trilogy starring the character Marcus Goldman with 'The Book of Baltimore' (2016) and 'The Alaska Sanders Case' (2022). It would be repeated, on a smaller scale, with 'The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer' (2018) and 'The Enigma of Room 622' (2020), in a decade that is difficult for him to take stock of and that for him “more dizzying than prodigious.” ».

He assures, however, that he cannot state the 'Dicker formula' that has worked for him until now and that guarantees that readers devour his novels. “Someone said that there are three rules to make a successful novel, but no one knows them,” he says ironically.

He has triumphed before turning forty, but he is aware that the wind may no longer be so favorable. He doesn't feel pressure. “Luckily I have achieved very good success,” he confesses. A businessman and editor as well as a writer, he believes in the future of the novel and to thank the reader for his loyalty he promises to “work hard to get them to places and places that perhaps they would not go alone.”