DECEMBER 2022 - AudioFile
Chris Harper’s deep voice is engaging enough to keep listeners listening to this confusing meta-mystery. Joël Dicker, the main character and author, recently split from his relationship and, experiencing writer’s block, checked into a Geneva luxury hotel, hoping for quiet and inspiration. His curiosity is piqued when he discovers that the hotel has rooms numbered 621, 621A, and 623, but no 622. Harper is excellent at picking up dangling plot threads and weaving them into a comprehensible fabric. His voice is compelling as Joël and a fellow guest discover that 16 years earlier someone was killed in Room 622. Details were kept in-house, and the murder is still unsolved. Despite Harper’s ratcheting up of tension and appealing character renditions, sudden time shifts weaken the novel’s credibility. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
From the Publisher
"Joël Dicker’s innovative page-turner ... weds the allure of a jigsaw puzzle with the split-second timing of an Agatha Christie mystery.... [The Enigma of Room 622 is an] exhilarating tour de force" — Wall Street Journal
"This astonishingly smart, emotionally satisfying, and strangely intimate novel is not to be missed." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A tale of romance, masterful duplicity, and... [a] cleverly jigsawed plot, [The Enigma of Room 622 is both]... homage to Agatha Christie, and ... a touching farewell to Dicker's late publisher." — Booklist
“How is the latest Joël Dicker? …Tension crackles on every page. Melodrama veers to suspense … [Dicker] has mastered the genre." — Le Figaro
"A new meta-mystery from the Swiss author unfolds with uncanny precision and evolves from a hotel whodunnit into something more nebulous. The elegant surroundings bring to mind classic mysteries, with notes of subversion peppered throughout." — CrimeReads
Praise for previous title: "Joël Dicker is a bright . . . star of suspense." — Lisa Gardner
Praise for previous title: "Unimpeachably perfect.... It's [Dicker's] light touch and engaging voice that make [his] writing so infectious." — The New York Times Book Review
[Dicker] stages his drama as masquerade and, at curtain call, finally takes off the mask. In a novel where the clues are interwoven with such precision, Dicker's true loyalties are pronounced loud and clear: paternal love..., writing, his mentor Bernard,... Albert Cohen, Tolstoy, and García Márquez, and attachment to his city, Geneva. — La Tribune de Genève
In short... [The Enigma of Room 622 is] a simmering concoction that even Agatha Christie would find irresistible, ...[taking the reader] along for a dizzying ride. — Le Parisien
With The Enigma of Room 622, Dicker's strengths as a storyteller resurface once again ... we are caught in a fascinating assembly of clues –constructing and reconstructing scenes during which the characters disappear into an elaborate game of charades. — Le Journal du Dimanche
Even if means writing another page-turner, Jöel Dicker gives us his all, having as much fun playing with conventions as ever, and, in turn, elevating the detective novel to new heights — Le Soir
One of the most widely read Francophone authors in the world... [Dicker] knows how to captivate readers ... twist and turns ... meticulous investigations, he jumps back and forth in time, all the better to lose us yet drive us impatient for the final denouement. Pure reading pleasure. — Lire
