THE MYSTERY OF HENRI PICK, clever and fun, entertaining and sly

THE MYSTERY OF HENRI PICK
DAVID FOENKINOS (tr. Sam Taylor)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: The delightful first title in a new collaboration with Channel 4's Walter Presents: a fast-paced comic mystery enriched by a deep love of books

In the small town of Crozon in Brittany, a library houses manuscripts that were rejected for publication: the faded dreams of aspiring writers. Visiting while on holiday, young editor Delphine Despero is thrilled to discover a novel so powerful that she feels compelled to bring it back to Paris to publish it. The book is a sensation, prompting fevered interest in the identity of its author—apparently one Henri Pick, a now-deceased pizza chef from Crozon. Sceptics cry that the whole thing is a hoax: how could this man have written such a masterpiece? An obstinate journalist, Jean-Michel Rouche, heads to Brittany to investigate.

By turns farcical and moving, The Mystery of Henri Pick is a fast-paced comic mystery enriched by a deep love of books—and of the authors who write them.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'm guessin' a majority of y'all don't know about Walter Presents (link above). It's presented on PBS in the US, which means it's hidden from most people most of the time. Hard to create a breakout hit in the media landscape we have; harder still to do it with subtitles.

Damn shame, that. I haven't seen the film of this story...ain't paying for Prime Video when they shove ads at me (now it's the US streamer as of 2025)...but as a very French story that isn't overtly snobby or très precieuse in its roots and branches, I'd like to see it have success commensurate with its quality.

Plus it's set in Brittany, one of the more anti-Parisian-hegemony parts of France. Imagine Oregon versus California, or upstate New York versus NYC. That kind of underdog struggle ethos suffuses this entire story.

It's really a fascinating story about books that only exist as created by their authors...much in the spirit of The Brautigan Library, follow the link for their introduction and mission statement...and housed in a special collection located as far from the cultural hegemon that is Publishing in France. That alone would've made my ears prick up. Author Foenkinos has a couple books coming out at the end of October 2025 which I've written happy reviews for; this book has, I'm sad to say, languished unread and unreviewed because Reasons. Not good ones, but Reasons.

Fixing it now has been a real pleasure. Author Foenkinos via translator Sam Taylor has built a good take-down machine, skewering our need to see behind the scenes and dig up the dirt on every single damn thing in the world...no sense of "happy to have {thing}" survives the compulsion to find out what's wrong with it. When nothing's wrong with it, something wrong with that. Being pathologically in the know is not entirely new but has hit the gas hard this decade. As our journalist character Jean-Michel Rouche exemplifies, we want the stones turned and the tea spilled, and we want it NOW.

Using all of literary culture as his sources, Author Foenkinos has probably made a lot of us more aware than ever that the world of publishing, the world of literature, and the world of us readers who lap it all up aren't the same, but are all chock-a-block with the best, the most fun, the most amusing stories, and they're all served up on demand...what a glorious time to be alive! That is the light side to the darker one enumerated above. One necessitates the other at this moment in technological societal development.

The knowing nudges and the sly side-eye moments are all well thought out. I appreciated The author's explicit acknowledgment of midcentury monadnock Brautigan, whose work has maybe not aged that well; thinking of In Watermelon Sugar in particular. Nothing ages faster than Utopia...though it would've been nicer than the world we got. (Nineteen sixty-four, the one in that book, never felt as far away as it does now.) Reminders of the very French attitude of affection and respect for literature in A Novel Bookstore by Laurence Cossé abounded for me. It's the same playfully exaggerated attitude of piss-taking that unites them.

Plot developments aren't going to surprise anyone. You're reading this story to savor the soufflé not fill up on the steak. Everyone, Delphine the editor, Frédéric the novelist manqué, Jean-Michel mentioned above...all raise their piece of the froth high for you to delight in. It's light on suspense and filled with thousands of bubbles effervescing from the sense of fun underlying the project.

You know your own humor best. read a sample; if it doesn't hit, don't commit. It hit me just right, and right when I could use it most.