The Enigma Of Room 622 - Joel Dicker

Mystery

Rating: 8.5/10

After a break-up our main character, Joel, flees to a luxury resort in the Swiss Alps, intent on rest and relaxation. He never imagined that he would be spending his vacation unraveling a crime committed in the hotel many years earlier. In a room that no longer seems to exist.

The reader soon becomes acquainted with several key characters, or maybe suspects is a better word, and set on a path of intricate intrigue and out of frame machinations.

All the characters are plotting in one way or another, to further their ambitions, for true love, for revenge, and even for sheer entertainment.

This is a novel of a writer who is writing a novel, so we as the reader never really gain our footing as to which, and who’s, story we are in.

But therein lies the essence of the mystery. If there is a swift explanation, the plot fails and there is no novel.  For a novel to exist, a writer must push the boundaries of plausibility, undo reality, and ultimately create a story where there was none before.

A lovely quote that I feel applies here; “Life is a novel whose conclusion we already know, in the end the hero dies.  The most important thing is not how our story ends, but how we fill the pages.”

Book Pairing(s): Secret Lives by Mark De Castique, Socialites Guide To Murder by S.A. Golden, Beginners Guide To Murder by Rosalind Stopps