Table Talk

A satire of pompous restaurants that darkens into a thriller about teenage killers and their parents. Moira Hodgson reviews Herman Koch's "The Dinner."

Feb. 15, 2013 5:31 p.m. ET

Two Dutch couples meet in a fancy Amsterdam restaurant to discuss a horrific crime. Grainy images have appeared on YouTube showing their 15-year-old sons beating and burning to death a homeless woman in an ATM booth. The police are hunting for the killers, but the faces of the boys are so blurred that they so far remain unidentified—except by their parents.

"The Dinner," a suspense novel by Herman Koch, has sold over a million copies since it was published in Europe in 2009, and it's not difficult to understand...

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