The Truth About the Harry Kipper Case

Author Name: Joel Decker

The novel begins with the mysterious disappearance of fifteen-year-old Nola Kellergan in late August 1975 in Aurora, New Hampshire. An elderly woman saw the girl entering the woods surrounding the town, followed by an unidentified man. The woman died fifteen minutes after reporting what she had seen. The case was then filed as an unknown case due to weak evidence.

The novel jumps to 2008 in New York City, where Marcus Goldman, a young writer whose first novel was a huge success, finds himself facing a temporary ban. His publisher demands a new novel and threatens to sue him if he doesn't deliver the new book on time. Suffering from a lack of inspiration and an inability to write, Marcus heads to New Hampshire in search of a writing environment. He visits his old friend and college professor, Harry Kipper, another writer whose best-selling book, *The Origins of Evil*, was a huge success, having been written in Aurora. However, Marcus is unable to write there and returns to New York with blank pages. A few days after his return, he receives a phone call that turns his life upside down. Harry Kipper is arrested after the police find Nola Kellergan's body in his backyard, along with the manuscript of his best-selling novel, *The Origins of Evil*. Convinced of his friend's innocence, Marcus returns to the small town to investigate what happened thirty-three years ago in that quiet town, which may be more exciting than we think.

A detective novel, without a doubt, but also a psychological novel that reflects the breathtaking and joyful setbacks at the same time, and a moral novel that clearly exposes the reality of the current reality of the depths of American society, which is well hidden and evolving in a bewildering manner behind the mask drawn by the makeup artists of the American avant-garde.

An engaging novel full of action, suspense, humor, and contemplation. Alongside the plot, the novel includes thirty-one pieces of advice for writing a novel from Harry Kipper to the young writer Marcus, and how the writer views his literary product. In one of his pieces of advice, Kipper says: “Words belong to everyone, until the moment you prove you own them, then you can be known as a writer. Some may try to convince you that a book is a relationship with words, but that's wrong! It's a relationship with people.” The events unfold between narrating what is happening in the present moment and recalling past events, whether at the level of the murder and the relationship between the accused and the victim, or at the level of Harry Kipper's care for his student Marcus.