Joël Dicker: Le Livre des Baltimore (2015)

I just looked at the popular French website babelio.com for comments on Joël Dicker's Le Livre des Baltimore (2015), read a few of the amateur reviews (514) to this follow-up to his hugely successful La Verite sur l'affaire Harry Québert (2012, with 1571 reviews) and breathed a silent sigh. I enjoyed Harry Québert to some extent, although the several hundred pages were a bit daunting, but the 600-page Le Livre des Baltimore went back to the boîte à lire only half-read: enough is enough, or too much. Harry Québert made it to the first selection of the Goncourt novel, garnered the Prix Goncourt des lycéens as well as the Grand Prix de l'académie française 2012, and yet I ask myself why. Both of these books, and it appears the latest Dicker, La Disparition de Stéphanie Mayer, are not only set in the US, not only about a mystery with many twists and turns, not only bear the markings of a young adult novel, but are also so obviously made to be filmed, causing Frédéric Beigbeder to remark that Dicker wrote the same book three times: make as much money as possible seems to be the ruling instinct with the Swiss Dicker. And yet to me 'real' novels are written from the intellect, not with the bank account in mind. OK, all writers have to survive and make some compromises, but we're not talking about that here. I got bored with Le Livre des Baltimore halfway through, read Marie NDiaye's very short play Hilda (1999) in a very brief time, ditched Dicker permanently, and was struck by the effect Hilda was having on me: my conclusion is that Marie NDiaye is a brilliant writer, Joël Dicker merely brilliant at writing best sellers. The difference between the two is enormous. (Oh, by the way, Babelio doesn't give Hilda a single review, although Les Éditions du minuit contains several professional reviews of it. There must be a moral in there somewhere.)

My other post on Joël Dicker:
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Joël Dicker: La Vérité sur l'Affaire Harry Kleber