Title: The Enigma of Room 622
Author: Joël Dicker
Genre: Mystery, Thriller

Wow. This book is not like anything I’ve read before. So many threads – no telling where they’ll lead. Never where you think, for sure. It’s nearly 600 pages, but the payoff is worth it.

It’s got a little bit of everything. A story inside a story. Unrequited love. Backstabbing businessmen in a struggle for power and money. Isolated closed-circle whodunnit. A cold case to unravel.

Nobody is who they seem to be. Who is Scarlett? Who is Sinior Tarnogol? The Enigma of Room 622 will keep you guessing.

It seems oddly anachronistic at times. I kept double-checking dates. Olga and her daughters Irina and Anastasia in particular. They lived by the philosophy that marrying well was a woman’s only option.

The author is Swiss, and the book was originally written in French. The translation to English is flawless, but it still has the undefinable feel of a translated novel.

Recommended: YES
One-word description: COMPLEX

I received this Advanced Reader Copy of The Enigma of Room 622 from NetGalley and HarperVia in exchange for an honest review.

Description

A September 2022 Amazon Best of the Month Pick

“Dicker salutes Agatha Christie even as he drops the reader through one trapdoor into another, so that by the end, we doubt we’ve ever read another novel quite like it. (We haven’t.) Fans of Ruth Ware and Lucy Foley will hug this book in between chapters; the many readers who love Anthony Horowitz’s mysteries will celebrate. And me? I’ll be reading it again.”—A. J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window

“[The Enigma of Room 622 is an] exhilarating tour de force”–The Wall Street Journal

A burnt-out writer’s retreat at a fancy Swiss hotel is interrupted by a murder mystery in this metafictional, meticulously crafted whodunit from the New York Times bestselling author of The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair.

A writer named Joël, Switzerland’s most prominent novelist, flees to the Hôtel de Verbier, a luxury resort in the Swiss Alps. Disheartened over a recent breakup and his longtime publisher’s death, Joël hopes to rest. However, his plans quickly go awry. It all starts with a seemingly innocuous detail: at the Verbier, there is no room 622.

Before long, Joël and fellow guest Scarlett uncover a long-unsolved murder that transpired in the hotel’s room 622. The attendant circumstances: the succession of Switzerland’s largest private bank, a mysterious counterintelligence operation called P-30, and a most disreputable sabotage of hotel hospitality. A European phenomenon, The Enigma of Room 622 is a matryoshka doll of intrigue–as precise as a Swiss watch–and Dicker’s most diabolically addictive thriller yet.

Translated from the French by Robert Bononno