Simenon, Georges

Dirty Snow (New York Review Books Classics)

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Despair is an expression of the total personality
a well written book but
"Can anything get much worse than this?"
Catching It Where The Chicken Catches The Axe
"He wanted it. He had been afraid of it, but he wanted it."

Dirty Snow (New York Review Books Classics)
Georges Simenon , Louise Varese , and William T. Vollmann
Manufacturer: NYRB Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1590170431
Release Date: 2003-08-31

Book Description

Nineteen-year-old Frank Friedmaier lives in a country under occupation. Most people struggle to get by; Frank takes it easy in his mother's whorehouse, which caters to members of the occupying forces. But Frank is restless. He is a pimp, a thug, a petty thief, and, as Dirty Snow opens, he has just killed his first man. Through the unrelenting darkness and cold of an endless winter, Frank will pursue abjection until at last there is nowhere to go.

Hans Koning has described Dirty Snow as "one of the very few novels to come out of German-occupied France that gets it exactly right." In a study of the criminal mind that is comparable to Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me, Simenon maps a no man's land of the spirit in which human nature is driven to destruction—and redemption, perhaps, as well—by forces beyond its control.

Customer Reviews:

Despair is an expression of the total personality.......2006-10-25

doubt only of thought. Soren Kierkegaard

Frank Friedmaier, the protagonist of Georges Simenon's novel "Dirty Snow" seems to have no doubts about his life. In fact he seems to be more a creature of base animal instinct than of anything resembling thought. If he has doubts about anything they are not evident. But his words and deeds bespeak an unconscious despair so profound that the reader can feel it with every page.

Simenon was nothing if not prolific in both his literary and public life. Born in Belgium in 1903, Simenon turned out hundreds of novels. Simenon's obsession with writing caused him to break off an affair (he was prolific in this area of his life as well) with the celebrated Josephine Baker in Paris when he could only write twelve novels in the twelve month period in which they were involved. Although perhaps best known for his Inspector Maigret detective novels, Simenon also wrote over a hundred novels that he referred to as `romans durs' (literally "hard novels"). "Dirty Snow" is one of Simenon's hard novels and to call it noir is an understatement. "Dirty Snow" is darker than noir, devoid of any light or optimism. In the hands of Simenon it is an absorbing (entertaining seems an inapt word) look at the darker side of life.

Frank Friedmaier lives in his mother's brothel in a small apartment building. The brothel is in an unnamed city in occupied France during World War II. Frank divides his time between the brothel and a local bar inhabited by an assortment of shady characters that include low level criminals, women of `easy virtue', and the occasional German soldier. When he returns home at night he camps down with whichever one of his mother's employees suits his fancy. What follows may best be described as nasty, brutish, and short. There is no affection, not even feigned affection, just feral activity.

The book follows Frank's descent into increasingly lower levels of behavior. He decides the time has come to kill a man, lies in wait in some snow that had been dirtied by the day's activities, and then takes a knife to a German soldier and stabs him to death. He reveals his presence to a passing neighbor, the father of a young girl who Frank seems to like, just so that the neighbor will know that Frank has murdered the soldier. Frank is confident that the neighbor will keep the information to himself. Frank next plans a robbery. The robbery is successful but Frank soon finds himself in a German prison subject to repeated interrogations. By the end of the book Frank has completed a journey that has taken him on a journey through what Dante would have considered different layers of hel l.

The fascinating aspect of Dirty Snow for me lay in the narration. Simenon has pulled off a neat trick here. The narrator is Frank and we are privy to his innermost thoughts, such as they are. Yet it is the absence of thought and the inability to evince any feeling in a rational manner that grabs the reader. There are sections, particularly those involving the daughter of the neighbor who witnessed the killing, where you can almost sense that Frank would like to act on a normal level with normal emotions. He may come close but he always retreats. As Dirty Snow ends, in a courtyard in the prison, Simenon has Frank perform one simple act involving an article of clothing. It is an act that Frank has long observed of the other prisoners. His instinctive performance of that act brings Franks journey and the book to its inevitable end.

Dirty Snow is a fascinating, if dark, look at one small aspect of the human condition. I found it well worth reading. L. Fleisig

a well written book but .......2006-07-16

it is a noir book, simenon is a great writer , i just wish his main character was a little more believable,you almost wish that he would have had him declared insane.... to make it more believable.

"Can anything get much worse than this?".......2005-06-22

The above question is asked by this edition's Afterword about the protagonist's fate. Frank Friedlander is the son of a brothel keeper in an occupied country, and a self-declared 'piece of s***'. Unable to find satisfaction in abusing his mother's whores, knifing army officers or robbing old ladies' heirlooms, the one thing he constantly craves is recognition. He's a piece of s***, so you'd better step around him. Flaunting the fruits of his crimes, it's only a matter of time before his enemies exact retribution.

The novel recalls the most brutal parts of Hammett's The Glass Key, Camus' L'Etranger and Koestler's Darkness at Noon. Part of me wonders whether that should be a recommendation.

Catching It Where The Chicken Catches The Axe.......2005-05-17

Georges Simenon's Dirty Snow (1948) is a grim, claustrophobic, if somewhat typical, examination of the human psyche by the Belgian master of the psychological novel. Taking place in an unnamed country existing under the occupation of an amoral foreign power, Dirty Snow depicts a fallen, sordid world which is equal parts Franz Kafka, Jean Rhys, and Jean Genet, though Simenon's protagonist, Frank Friedmaier, lacks the transcendent spiritual insight which elevated Genet's antiheroes above the common thief, corner boy, street thug, and murderer.

Dirty Snow is the story of a spoiled, narcissistic, and unfocused sociopath whose boredom with his own aimless existence leads him to casually manipulate, abuse, rob, or murder a number of innocent neighborhood citizens. Like the characters in Genet, Frank kills because he wants to, because the male cronies he admires boast that they have committed murders of their own, and because he wants to establish some definite marker in his history to justify his life to himself.

Oddly obsessed with Holst, his older male neighbor across the hall, Frank, who lives with his shrewish, brothel-keeping mother, seduces and then casts aside naïve young Sissy, Holst's daughter, for the sheer sport of it. But Frank's seduction of Sissy is also partially an act of unrealized homosexual sublimation, as absolutely nothing Frank does arouses Holst's attention. Though Holst all but witnesses Frank committing his first murder, and could reasonably assume that Frank is the person who has violated his daughter's body, health, and spirit during his absence, Holst remains utterly passive.

Dirty Snow is one of Simenon's more critically respected novels, but while the first two-thirds are gripping and suspenseful, the last third, in which Frank is arrested and incarcerated by the occupying administration, is dull, undramatic, and far too long. In The Miracle of the Rose (1951), Genet brought his solitary prisoners to vibrant, shadow-casting life; but Frank's incarceration plods on uneventfully for over 60 pages, and Frank completely lacks the rich inner fabric of Genet's "saints," dreaming social misfits, transvestites, and randy, strutting alpha males. It is difficult to fathom why Simenon chose to conclude the novel as he does, since the anticlimactic ending deflates a book which had the potential to become a minor classic.

"He wanted it. He had been afraid of it, but he wanted it.".......2005-03-26

Eighteen-year-old Frank Friedermaier lives in an occupied, wartime city. But he lives in relative luxury with his mother, who operates a clandestine brothel from their top-floor apartment, while the neighbours suffer through the winter with tiny lumps of coal and watery soups. Since he was a child - when he was temporarily shipped off to rural foster parents - Frank has wrestled with the problem of powerlessness in the face of destiny. Confronted with fate, one might either deny it or embrace it. But Frank chooses to taunt it by running huge risks and daring the world to snap back at him. In this way he makes himself feel powerful. The occupied city gives him every opportunity for such a game, letting him follow abjection wherever it leads: murder, petty theft, procuring young girls for his mother's business, and subjecting the one girl who loves him to a quite depraved betrayal. It can only be a matter of time before destiny bites back... Simenon's project here seems to be the exploration of a particular type of personality. He has been praised for getting the sense of occupied France "just right", but it could just as easily be American-occupied Germany, or any situation in which an individual feels oppressed by social convention. The story is a simple one, but the real interest here is Frank's character. The more we observe him, the more we see that there is something driving him other than the apparent urge for annihilation. In the final pages, we see that his violent immoral quest has been, ironically, as much about striving for connection as self-destruction: he is reaching out for a father in Holst, a lover in Sissy and, in "the woman at the window", a vision of domestic bliss.

Three Bedrooms in Manhattan (New York Review Books Classics)

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Set Your Dogs And Wolves On Me
"Weren't they starting from scratch anyway?"
classic

Three Bedrooms in Manhattan (New York Review Books Classics)
Georges Simenon
Manufacturer: NYRB Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 159017044X
Release Date: 2003-10-31

Book Description

An actor, recently divorced, at loose ends in New York; a woman, no less lonely, perhaps even more desperate than the man: they meet by chance in an all-night diner and are drawn to each other on the spot. Roaming the city streets, hitting its late-night dives, dropping another coin into yet another jukebox, these two lost souls struggle to understand what it is that has brought them, almost in spite of themselves, together. They are driven—from moment to moment, from bedroom to bedroom—to improvise the most unexpected of love stories, a tale of suspense where risk alone offers salvation.

Georges Simenon was the most popular and prolific of the twentieth century's great novelists. Three Bedrooms in Manhattan—closely based on the story of his own meeting with his second wife—is his most passionate and revealing work.

Customer Reviews:

Set Your Dogs And Wolves On Me .......2005-05-02

Though neither a crime nor a detective novel, Georges Simenon's Three Bedrooms in Manhattan (1946) nonetheless takes place in the lonely, desperate, claustrophobic, and paranoid world of most of the author's other books--of which there are hundreds. The story of a recently divorced French actor, Francios, who takes up solitary residence in Manhattan until he encounters and becomes dependent upon an unattached woman who is also of foreign birth, Three Rooms In Manhattan is a dark examination of a crippled human psyche. Simenon had few peers when it came to writing psychological fiction, and despite a hopeful if slightly improbable ending, the novel is gripping and seductive. Simenon also excelled at recording the vicissitudes of human emotion under stress, and his earnest depiction of Francios, who is crippled by jealousy, delusion, and rage, is superb.

Early in the novel, Simenon shrewdly depicts Kay, the object of Francios's obsession, as a listless, calculating mythomaniac, so much so that during the book's first 50 pages, Kay seems like one of the permanently wounded, misplaced female protagonists found in Jean Rhys' five novels. But readers are seeing Kay through Francios's blighted eyes, and Kay eventually manifests on the page in quite a different fashion. Nonetheless, Three Rooms In Manhattan revels in the grim, the sordid, and the violent, and an ugly fog of sadomasochism continually hangs in the air. Few 20th Century writers, with the exception of Denis De Rougemont, Jean Genet, and Vita Sackville-West, in her diaries, have had the courage to depict the cruelty and desire for domination and submission that lies just beneath the surface of passionate love.

Appropriately, the book takes place in mid-autumn, when the New York City weather routinely shifts between the transcendent and the unpleasant. The novel's first half revolves around a sometimes nightmarish schedule of endless, compulsive, and directionless walks which the couple takes through the city. Stopping only to drink and smoke in bars, and occasionally to eat, Francios and Kay are two lost souls seeking solace in one another, and both incapable of being apart and unable to be alone, except for the briefest of intervals. All the while, unspoken suspicions, recriminations, and phantoms from the past hang in the air.

Modern readers may find Francios misogynist in the extreme, as he spends a great amount of psychic energy spewing volleys of hatred towards Kay in his imagination, even while he walks calmly beside her through the haunted city streets. The idea of taking active revenge against all of the women who have wounded him--especially against his ex-wife, who has left him for a much younger man--through Kay is never far from his consciousness. But Simenon superbly reveals how it is the ostensibly subservient and masochistic Kay, and not Francios, who is the stronger of the two. Accepting even physical abuse, Kay manages to remain perceptive, objective, and resilient, while her lover repeatedly collapses in bouts of tears, humiliation, and self hatred. For Francios, passion and deep anxiety are synonymous; unable to live independently, he discovers that love is a stifling, suffocating trap too.

The mood of fatalism that suffuses Three Rooms In Manhattan was somewhat prescient; Simenon, upon whom Francios was based, eventually married Denyse Ouimet, the woman who inspired the character of Kay. But Ouimet later "lapsed by degrees into psychosis," and the child of their union, Marie-Jo, committed suicide.

Most of Simenon's non-detective fiction has been long out of print in America; New York Review Books is to be commended for bringing this and several other classic Simenon novels back into circulation.

"Weren't they starting from scratch anyway?".......2004-06-17

Loneliness and despair are the core themes at the heart of the novella "Three Bedrooms in Manhattan" by Simenon. Francois Combe is a French actor who left Paris abruptly after his wife, a successful actress, left him for another actor half his age. He's living alone in a dirty, untidy New York apartment. One evening, the routine and predictable sounds from the neighbours next door, send him out on the streets. He ends up in a bar, and there he meets a 33-year-old woman named Kay. Francois notices her immediately on the next bar stool, and "what he really liked about her were the signs of wear and tear." She's homeless and just as lonely and desperate as he is. After more than a few drinks, they check into a cheap hotel. This is the beginning of an affair that is based in mutual need. Both Francois and Kay need somebody--anybody--and it just so happens that they meet and connect.

The interesting thing about the story is the way in which the relationship is encapsulated within 150 plus pages. Francois and Kay immediately latch onto one another, and by the next day, they are already curiously dependant. Francois can't bear to be parted from Kay, and she worries that he'll never come back. Relationships always go through phases, and Francois and Kay's relationship moves rapidly through each of these phases--the glow of the honeymoon period, the possessive phase, the disapproval of a friend--all the way to disillusion and moving apart towards self-protection.

On the unpleasant side, neither Francois nor Kay are interesting or nice people. They are overwhelming desperate, and this desperation oozes into all aspects of their relationship. Kay constantly plays the same old sad songs on the jukebox, and she "seemed to be seeking out the despair of others." Francois treats Kay rather brutally at one point, and she just absorbs it. They quickly establish a routine together--they get up around noon, walk around the city, and drink at numerous bars along the way. This gets old, and caused me to feel a general lack of interest in the characters or the outcome. Parts of the story were a little unbelievable, and the two characters remain somewhat cold and remote in the middle of all this misguided passion. Overall, the book had too much self-indulgent breast-beating for me to become attached to the story--displacedhuman

classic.......1999-04-06

one of the best true to life love stor

The Strangers in the House (New York Review Books Classics)

Average customer rating:

I have been a stranger in a strange land

The Strangers in the House (New York Review Books Classics)
Georges Simenon
Manufacturer: NYRB Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1590171942
Release Date: 2006-10-24

Book Description

Dirty, drunk, unloved, and unloving, Hector Loursat has been a bitter recluse for eighteen long years—ever since his wife abandoned him and their newborn child to run off with another man. Once a successful lawyer, Loursat now guzzles burgundy and buries himself in books, taking little notice of his teenage daughter or the odd things going on in his vast and ever-more-dilapidated mansion. But one night the sound of a gunshot penetrates the padded walls of Loursat’s study, and he is forced to investigate. What he stumbles on is a murder.

Soon Loursat discovers that his daughter and her friends have been leading a dangerous secret life. He finds himself strangely drawn to this group of young people, and when one of them is accused of the murder, he astonishes the world by taking up the young man’s defense.

In The Strangers in the House, Georges Simenon, master chronicler of the dark side of the human heart, gives us a detective story that is also a tale of an improbable redemption.

Customer Reviews:

I have been a stranger in a strange land.......2006-12-22

Exodus ii. 22.

Georges Simenon was nothing if not prolific in both his literary and public life. Born in Belgium in 1903, Simenon turned out hundreds of novels. Simenon's obsession with writing caused him to break off an affair (he was prolific in this area of his life as well) with the celebrated Josephine Baker in Paris when he could only write twelve novels in the twelve month period in which they were involved. Although perhaps best known for his Inspector Maigret detective novels, Simenon also wrote over a hundred novels that he referred to as `romans durs' (literally "hard novels"). "Strangers in the House" is one of Simenon's hard novels and to call it noir is not an understatement.

Hector Loursat, an accomplished attorney, has been a stranger in his own house ever since his wife abandoned him and their newborn child eighteen years ago. Since that time Loursat's universe has shrunk to his bedroom, his library and his dining room. He barely speaks to his now 18 year old daughter or their cook. They are for all intents and purposes, strangers. He is a hermit, alone with his books and a profligate amount of burgundy and brandy. It is only the murderous presence of other strangers in his house that may stir him out of his emotional coma. That dark-setting forms the backdrop for "Strangers in the House".

Loursat is roused from his alcohol-induced sleep by what he thinks may be a gunshot. His suspicions are confirmed when he stumbles through portions of the house he hasn't seen in years and discovers a body. He soon discovers that his daughter has fallen in with something of a gang of youths who like to live on the edge. The rest of the novel finds Loursat grappling with the implications of the murder. We see Loursat struggling out of his hermetic cocoon. The reader is left to wonder, as the story progresses, whether Loursat can break out of his cocoon long enough to connect with his daughter and protect her interests through a criminal investigation and trial.

The result is wholly satisfying. I was totally drawn to the character of Loursat. Simenon does not make him particularly attractive. His word pictures of Loursat's appearance and manner are not designed to elicit great sympathy. Nevertheless, the pain Loursat has suffered (although unstated) is palpable and as the story progressed I could not help but hope that Loursat would find the strength to `set things right' both with the criminal investigation and trial and with his life. The result is surprising but it also felt just about right.

New York Review of Books should be congratulated for bringing Simenon's classic `romans durs' back into print. The paperback quality is excellent and each novel in the series is introduced by a writer of note. In this instance the marvelous P.D. James writes a brief but powerful introduction. I recommend all of Simenon's books and Strangers in the House is no exception. L. Fleisig

The Engagement (New York Review Books Classics)

Average customer rating:

"Even from Mr. Hire's room, the goose bumps on her skin were visible."
When the Internal and External Collide
"You shall become engaged to a woman
"It was as if someone had opened the doors of time and space for him."
NYRB brings out another of simenon's great psychological novels

The Engagement (New York Review Books Classics)
Georges Simenon
Manufacturer: NYRB Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1590172280
Release Date: 2007-03-06

Book Description

On the outskirts of Paris, a prostitute is found murdered in a vacant lot. In a seedy apartment house nearby lives pasty, fat Mr. Hire. Mr. Hire, who earns his living through a petty postal scam, is a convicted pornographer, a peeping Tom, and, once a week, the unlikely star of a Parisian bowling club, where people think he works for the police. He is a faceless man of regular habits who keeps to himself and gives his neighbors the creeps. After the murder, Mr. Hire’s concierge points a finger at him: he was out late the night of the crime. The police have the suspect under 24-hour surveillance. They are only waiting for him to make the inevitable mistake and give himself away.

Except that creepy Mr. Hire is in fact an innocent man, whose only mistake is to have fallen head-over-heels in love with the wrong girl.

One of the most chilling and compassionate of Simenon’s extraordinary psychological novels, The Engagement explores the mystery of a blameless heart in a compromised soul.

Customer Reviews:

"Even from Mr. Hire's room, the goose bumps on her skin were visible.".......2007-06-08

No question that for Simenon, less is more, as this enormously talented writer in "The Engagement" sketches out the essential lines of his protagonists and their rather drab and robotic lives with such skill that he engages us at every turn. What's real to Simenon is desire, greed, and death. There's little room here for sentiment, and if you're looking for a sweet confection, you've definitely entered the wrong door.

Simenon has created a "modern" twentieth-century man, Mr. Hire, who really has no spiritual or moral center. He simply is a collection of habits and fears, spiced with perverse self-flagellating pleasures and one great but rather ridiculous skill. His alienation from society, which itself is presented as crude and hard and bordering on a violent mob, is sad and almost understandable, considering his dysfunctionality may have a basis in the gross nature of those who surround him. Yet his one soft spot is the highly sexual dairy maid, Alice, who lives directly across from him. Her little piece of paradise is so close that he can see right into her windows.

So goes this Hitchcockian plot as Mr. Hire's robotic life is disrupted by this seductress and by the police. Underlying this plot is Simenon's writing machinery, which carries with it a valueless worldview. The author is really telling us we all amount to very little in the end: a collection of habits, enactments of our desires, and vain hopes for a better life. Why we are who we are is not of any significance to what we do while we are here in this life.

I found this work to be extraordinary in its philosophical and psychological implications. Simenon was way ahead of his time as a writer and thinker. Not only that, his selection of detail and his ability to draw up whole scenes through the skillful use of the five senses could teach many a writer how to make the page come alive.

When the Internal and External Collide.......2007-03-26

When a prostitute is murdered in an abandoned lot, all eyes look towards Mr. Hire as the suspect. The reader can certainly understand why. Hire makes his income in a petty postal scam and his main hobby is peeping on the woman across the courtyard as she undresses. His past is no better, with a conviction for petty sex offenses and some time in prison. No wonder the guy is in the crosshairs.

Yet THE ENGAGEMENT is one of Simenon's roman durs (hard novels) with more of a noir edge to them. Hire is innocent of the crime but, as is true for the roman durs, hardly innocent in any other application of the term. Hire's apparently empty internal world collides with the external as Hire realizes that some others, specifically the police, do not consider him to be as inconsequential as he thought. The scene in which Hire discovers at the train station that he is being watched and followed was among the most simple yet powerful scenes I have encountered of a character's horror at having his comfortable little world disturbed through no fault of one's own.

Despite his initial shock, Hire soon comes to enjoy being the center of someone's attention and starts showing off for the detectives on his tail. This excitement is heightened when the girl on whom Hire peeps starts showing some romantic interest. But in a morally vacuous world, it is all a ruse. Hire is being played for the sap. Even if the police knew of Hire's innocence, it is questionable whether they would care. They show the same apathy towards the lives of others as everyone else and seem less concerned with nabbing the real murderer than they are in getting the case behind them. They are just playing a different role in the game.

In his roman durs, Simenon shows no concern for issues of right and wrong. The amorality of the world simply is a given in which people are thrust and left to their own devices. It is an interesting world to visit while hoping we never find ourselves as its tenants.

"You shall become engaged to a woman.......2007-03-22

but another man shall lie with her." Deuteronomy 28:30

Georges Simenon was nothing if not prolific in both his literary and public life. Born in Belgium in 1903, Simenon turned out hundreds of novels. Simenon's obsession with writing caused him to break off an affair (he was prolific in this area of his life as well) with the celebrated Josephine Baker in Paris when he could only write twelve novels in the twelve month period in which they were involved. Although perhaps best known for his Inspector Maigret detective novels, Simenon also wrote over a hundred novels that he referred to as `romans durs' (literally "hard novels"). These hard stories typically involve a person's descent from normality (or a life that seems to bear the appearance of normality) into nihilism and despair. Usually there is a triggering event, a murder, a bankruptcy, or simply too much to drink on a road trip. The publishing arm of `"The New York Review" NYRB Books is reissuing Simenon's hard novels. "The Engagement" is one of Simenon's earliest hard novels and it was hard to put down. The story line is rather a simple one.

Mr. Hire is a quiet man. But he isn't quiet in the way that he blends into the background. He's quiet in the way that his neighbors find him odd and more than a bit scary. Odd in such a way that children are pulled into their parent's apartment when he is heard walking around in his Paris apartment. And, critically for "The Engagement", odd in such a way that when a neighborhood prostitute is found murdered, the concierge in his apartment tells the police Hire is the culprit. "The Engagement" is a study in contrasts. It gives us Mr. Hire, going about his daily business and gives us the police (with the helpful assistance of Hire's neighbors) going about their business and slowly obtaining enough information to arrest him for murder.

The storyline may not sound unique but the devil is always in the details. Simenon's prose may be direct and to the point but he manages to paint a compelling picture of his protagonists. Mr. Hire, the concierge, and the young girl across the street with whom Mr. Hire shares a voyeuristic relationship that holds the key to the story line, are all wonderfully drawn. Hire is not an attractive person yet this reader could not help but feel no small amount of empathy toward. It is hard to give examples without divulging too much of the plot. Suffice it to say that Simenon knows how to craft sentences that keep the reader turning page after page after page.

Simenon's hard novels are often referred to as psychological novels but I find that term a bit misleading. Simenon does not analyze. He does not delve deep into his protagonists' minds. He presents a story stripped of moralizing or analysis. He presents the reader with a slice of the human condition, usually an unpleasant slice, and lets the reader deal with the implications, the psychoanalysis if you like. They do offer glimpses into his protagonists' lives even though (or perhaps because) he does not fill in the blanks for you. His character's actions speak for themselves and what they have to say is not always pleasant. In a world of fiction filled with happiness and redemption and the ultimate triumph of good against evil, Simenon is a breath of fresh (if pessimistic) air. I recommend highly all of Simenon's romans durs and The Engagement is no exception. L. Fleisig

"It was as if someone had opened the doors of time and space for him.".......2007-03-17

When a brutal murder is committed in a small working class French neighbourhood, residents are understandably concerned. The victim, a young prostitute, was found in an empty lot, about two blocks away from a large boarding house. Days after the crime takes place, fingers are pointed to a solitary figure--Monsieur Hire--a short, unattractive middle-aged bachelor who rents a room in the noisy boarding house. While other residents socialize, Hire's behaviour sets him apart. His solitude and his lack of social graces create suspicion, and soon the police turn their attention to Hire.

At first Hire is oblivious that he's a suspect--he's too absorbed in his obsession with Alice--a young girl who works nearby. Her room is close to Hire's, and he spends his evenings indulging his voyeurism. There are hints that perhaps Alice is aware that she's being watched as she undresses each night. But does a voyeur desire to be observed? If the secrecy and anonymity of voyeurism are revealed, what happens to the roles of the observer and his object? We would expect, perhaps, anger or a desire to hide from the one being observed. But what happens when the object of voyeurism doesn't seem to mind and perhaps even relishes being spied on in the most intimate of moments?

Simenon's deeply psychological novel "The Engagement" falls squarely into the roman durs category of this author's substantial body of work, and Hire is perhaps one of Simenon's most interesting fictional creations. While Hire is not a likeable character, he just manages to be a sympathetic character--especially when events in this bleak novel unfold. As the number one suspect for the murder, Hire's past history, his solitary behavior and his current employment, convict him in the eyes of the police.

Hire is a creature of habit--"calm and measured in all his gestures" and his daily activities are timed and ordered quite perfectly. Hire's sterile self-contained life creates a silence that surrounds him and permeates this detached, unemotional story. This silence--the silence of utter loneliness--is set brilliantly against the daily tragedies, constant noise and poverty-stricken lives endured by the other residents of the boarding house. Hire is one of those people who never belong and exist on the periphery of society, and while he's not exactly sure how this happened, he's adjusted to his position in the world--asking nothing and expecting nothing in return. But it is Hire's obsessive relationship with Alice that challenges his expectations and his character. "The Engagement" is an unsettling book, and Hire is one of Simenon's strangest characters. If you've never read Simenon before, I suggest you begin with "The Man Who Watched Trains Go By" or "Monsieur Monde Vanishes." If you enjoy "The Engagement" I heartily recommend the film version--"Monsieur Hire" (a truly marvelous film from director Patrice Leconte)--displacedhuman

NYRB brings out another of simenon's great psychological novels.......2007-03-04

Originally published in 1933, this slim volume already showcases Simenon's unique brand of realism, which eschews easy humanism in favor of a punishingly bleak moral universe. The story centers on Mr. Hire, the middle-aged son of working class immigrant parents. When a prostitute is murdered in his neighborhood, Hire's asocial habits, petty criminal record and ethically dubious profession leads the police to his door. Fed by the suspicions of vindictive neighbors, detectives tail him relentlessly, waiting for Hire to slip up and yield any evidence linking him to the crime. Readers of Simenon's so called 'romans durs' will find The Engagement to be an excellent early example of its type. Furthermore, the brief afterword by John Gray provides informative context for the novel as well as evidence of a rare instance of autobiographical sourcing.

Average customer rating:

"Like many rich people, he is bored; and, like many bored people, he craves excitement."
A different Maigret
A Younger Inspector Maigret
OK

Maigret at the Gai-Moulin
Georges Simenon
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 015602845X

Book Description

It's closing time at the Gai Moulin, and Jean Chabot and René Delfrosse are planning to rob the till to pay of their debts. To their surprise, they stumble upon a dead body. What at first seems to the police an open and shut case proves more complicated when the body turns up next at the zoo, stuffed into a wicker basket. Into the puzzlement steps Maigret, who makes one of the most dramatic and colorful entrances of his career as he sorts out the tangled web of deceit.

Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon.

Customer Reviews:

"Like many rich people, he is bored; and, like many bored people, he craves excitement.".......2007-04-01

Long neglected and at the bottom of the barrel in sales here on Amazon, this gem takes place in Liege, Belgium presumably in 1931, the year it was written. Two teenaged boys, anxious to dip into the till of the Gai-Moulin nightclub where they waste away their time, hide in the basement until the place empties out. After working up their courage to commit their first criminal act, they creep upstairs, light a match to see where they're going, and find a dead body sprawled across the floor. They panic and run off. From this intriguing beginning, the story unwinds with a typical cast of Simenon characters and seeming contradictions.

I first quibbled with the translator, Geoffrey Sainsbury, as I thought the writing lacked the usual pop I've grown accustomed to. Word choice for a translator is key to either adding life to the prose or making the story flat. But this translation is the only one out there, and eventually the prose and pace picked up and drew me in thoroughly. Another slight difficulty for me was the non-appearance of Maigret until well past the middle of the book. We find out later that he's been there all along, hiding not just from the police, but from us too. Without Maigret, this work is merely good and gives us delicious European flavor and atmosphere as well as those ever-interesting characters.

From what I've read of Simenon thus far, his view of pre-WWII European social class structure comes across loud and clear: upper class folks are bored, corrupt, and blundering. They are contrasted to salt of the earth types, hard-working people scraping together a living, and the middle class, all of whom are knocked around by the elite. Maigret (Simenon) is the master weaver in these stories who understands the common threads with which European society is sewn and, standing apart, can analyze people's motives, morality, and lives. He himself seems to be of the middle class, as this brief description of his life at his apartment on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir reveals: "...Maigret was looking through his mail. 'Anything interesting?' asked Madame Maigret as she vigorously shook a rug out the window." Simenon plants all kinds of characters and events in the "rug" he weaves, and then vigorously shakes them out, cleaning his concoction nicely for us. All very entertaining.

Highly recommended for a literary evening by the fire.

A different Maigret.......2003-06-01

Atmosphere is stranger than in others Maigret's novels. But it's also very good novel. If you have read "Pedigree" (Simenon's childhood autobiography) you can make interesting parallels between one of the two young boys and Simenon himself. It seems to say to us that the line between criminals and the other humans isn't very large ...

A Younger Inspector Maigret.......2000-04-07

You can compare my review to the other one on this book. OUr views are not the same.

I found this book, which I read in French while living in California, to be a delight. It takes place in Liege, in the country of Simenon's birth, long before most of the novels. And part of the suspense (for it is a suspense murder mystery) is waiting for Maigret to appear.

Eventually the large figure in his dark winter overcoat enters the story, well supplied with his pipe(s) and tobacco, his mind racing over possibilities. And we are not disappointed, even after reading countless later stories. Not only does Simenon give us a satisfactory ending, but we have a splendid picture of an almost "old world" Liege and the kind of people who lived and worked in it.

No, definitely not just a "holiday book", this. Rather, a book for all seasons. Give it a try and you will agree.

OK.......1999-07-28

I read this book while I was on my vacation and I think it is exactly that sort of book :a vacation one. It is ok.

The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (New York Review Books Classics)

Average customer rating:

Nihilism is not only despair and negation
Captured by the author
"The impossible suddenly breaches the dykes of everyday life."
Simenon's Existential Man

The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (New York Review Books Classics)
Georges Simenon
Manufacturer: NYRB Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1590171497
Release Date: 2005-11-07

Book Description

Kees Popinga is a solid Dutch burgher whose idea of a night on the town is a game of chess at his club. Or so it has always appeared. But one night this model husband and devoted father discovers his boss is bankrupt and that his own carefully tended life is in ruins. Before, he had looked on impassively as the trains to the outside world swept by; now he catches the first train he can to Amsterdam. Not long after that, he commits murder.

Kees Popinga is tired of being Kees Popinga. He's going to turn over a new leaf—though there will be hell to pay.

Customer Reviews:

Nihilism is not only despair and negation.......2006-10-19

but above all the desire to despair and to negate. Camus.

Despair and negation predominate in Georges Simenon's "The Man Who Watched Trains Go By", a book that I considered to be darker than noir.

Simenon was nothing if not prolific in both his literary and public life. Born in Belgium in 1903, Simenon turned out hundreds of novels. Simenon's obsession with writing caused him to break off an affair (he was prolific in this area of his life as well) with the celebrated Josephine Baker in Paris when he could only write twelve novels in the twelve month period in which they were involved. Although perhaps best known for his Inspector Maigret detective novels, Simenon also wrote over a hundred novels that he referred to as `romans durs' (literally "hard novels"). As with many of his contemporaries such as Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books were marketed and sold as popular, pulp fiction. Also like Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books have stood up well over time. The New York Review of Books publishing division has reissued much of Simenon's books. They are well worth reading and "The Man Who Watch Trains Go By" is an excellent place to start.

The story's protagonist and narrator is Kees Poppinga. As the book opens Kees is seen and sees himself as a stolidly middle-class Dutch citizen living a life of relative comfort in the coastal town of Groningen. He is secure in his job as the manager of a ship's supply company. His sense of security is reflected in an attitude best described as smug and more than a bit conceited. On the surface, Kees' life seems well insulated from the harsher side of life. But Simenon shows us quickly that this appearance of security was really a thin veneer that could be washed away at a moment's notice. One night, Kees discovers that his company's owner has driven the company into bankruptcy. Kees will soon be out of the job and will likely lose everything he holds dear.

The rest of the book focuses on Kees' decent from smug satisfaction to nihilism and despair. Stripped of his middle-class sense of security Kees finds that he is also stripped of all those societal restraints that most civilized members of society have. Kees embarks on a journey of death, deceit, and madness. The only character trait that remains is one of conceit and superiority as he travel to Paris and falls in with the Parisian underworld.

The reader experience this journey through the narration of Kees and Simenon does an excellent job of allowing the reader to look out at the world through the eyes of a madman. It is something of an uncomfortable feeling but it made for compelling reason. I have already compared Simenon to Chandler and Hammett because they wrote in a similar genre and were contemporaries. As far as contemporary writers are concerned, the French-writer Michel Houellebecq (Elementary Particles) seems remarkably similar in both tone and style.

I have now read two of Simenon's romans durs and three of his Inspector Maigret mysteries. They have all been worth reading and if you are interested in either the detective genre or the type of dark psychological novel described here, Simenon is well worth discovering. L. Fleisig

Captured by the author.......2006-09-09

Simenon in a slow but progressive manner has the ability to draw the reader into the life of the protaganist no matter how heinous the situation. This is well manifest in this typical Simenon psychological thriller. If you like this type of ouevre The Man Who Watched Trains will fit the bill.

"The impossible suddenly breaches the dykes of everyday life.".......2006-05-09

Kees Popinga is a respectable middle-aged Dutch businessman who works in the office of a major shipping company. Popinga is extremely smug about his boringly predictable life and is particularly proud of his material possessions--"the best that money can buy." One evening, chance intervenes in Popinga's life, and he sees his employer Julius de Coster inside a bar getting drunk.

In a few startling minutes, Popinga learns that the company he works for is bankrupt, and that his boss is about to abscond with what's left of the money. Popinga's boss urges his employee to do the same. Stunned, Popinga returns home and goes to bed.

Whatever motivating factors have kept Popinga on the straight and narrow are suddenly absent. At first, he takes to his bed and refuses to leave, but then he develops a plan of escape, and abandoning his family, he goes to Paris. Popinga steps out of his respectable businessman skin and soon goes underground in the criminal underbelly of Paris. Amongst the fences, thieves and prostitutes of Paris, Popinga tries to lose himself, and discovers that in this fringe society, he is easily accepted. He masquerades with the "new personalities people kept finding for him."

"The Man Who Watched Trains Go By" follows the adventures of Popinga as he eventually becomes an internationally sought murderer. Author Simenon keeps his usual clinical distance from his characters, yet at the same time enters the mind of the deranged, egomaniac Popinga. By revealing Popinga's innermost private thoughts and fantasies through a series of hilarious letters sent to the newspapers telling 'his side' of events, Simenon creates a masterful, fascinating portrait and case study of a true psychopath. Simenon keeps tight control of his text while exploring the bizarre cat-and mouse game Kees plays with the Parisian detective hot on his tail. As Popinga tries to evade the police, episodes from his past reveal odd traits of behaviour that explain his sudden moral derailment. Popinga's predicament and his grandiose perception of his brilliance merge in this novel to create a surprising, delightfully ironic and darkly humourous tone that remains to the very last page. I have read a number of Simenon novels, and "The Man Who Watched Trains Go By"--the best one I've read so far--is a masterpiece--displacedhuman

Simenon's Existential Man.......2006-04-16

This book stands as evidence of the literary crime that has been perpetrated against the legacy of Georges Simenon over the last century. Written in 1938, 'The Man Who Watched Trains Go By' predates Camus' 'l'etranger' by eight years. Simenon's work is the study of what happens when a once uber-respectable bastion of bourgeois values watches as the very foundations of his existence crumble before his eyes. The pace at which the novel's central figure degenerates from an upstanding business leader obsessed with managing appearances to a bestial creature succumbing to every whim and fancy--all the while meticulously recording each step of his progress in his little red notebook--is dizzying. The questions raised by Simenon regarding man's confrontation with the ephemeral nature of meaning in existence are addressed at least as skillfully as Camus would nearly a decade later. This work--and many of Simenon's other romans durs--remain an essential link in the chain of existential novels ranging from Dostoevsky to Camus and Sartre. The fact that Simenon's works are not celebrated as such represents a significant injustice.

Maigret and the Man on the Bench (Maigret Mystery Series)

Average customer rating:

Intriguing Tale with Continual Surprises
The M.O. wouldn't work.
For Maigret Afficionados

Maigret and the Man on the Bench (Maigret Mystery Series)
Georges Simenon
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0156028379

Book Description

Mondays are nobody's favorite day, but when Maigret's week begins with a corpse found stabbed to death in a Parisian alley, the Inspector immediately sees a flaw. Murders are rarely committed on Mondays. That clue, along with the victim's strange recent behavior, leads Maigret to the cause of this nasty crime-and reveals the tale of a deadly marriage.

Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon.

Customer Reviews:

Intriguing Tale with Continual Surprises.......2006-08-06

Simenon is said to have described his stories as sketches, somewhat like preliminary drawings by an artist. This is not to say that the Maigret mysteries are unfinished, but that they perhaps lack decorative elements. However, this particular story - Maigret and the Man on the Bench - has a noticeably abrupt ending that does suggest a somewhat hurried conclusion. Nonetheless, Maigret and the Man on the Bench offers continual surprises and will appeal to Maigret's fans.

Maigret and the Man on the Bench reminds me of an early Sherlock Holmes mystery, The Man with the Twisted Lip, a tale of an apparently successful businessman, Mr. Neville St. Clair, that secretly poses as a beggar as he is in actuality unemployed. Similarly, Maigret's latest case involves a murder victim that is recognized as a man that was often seen sitting for hours on a public bench. His family proves unaware that he had lost his job a year earlier. What has been the source of his substantial income?

Maigret slowly peels back each layer of this puzzle, revealing a double life, duplicity, blackmail, theft, and murder. The sudden twist in the final section is disconcerting, even though such events do occur in actual investigations. Perhaps Simenon assumed that the astute reader would have considered this possibility (or something similar) as all other leads had proved untenable.

Maigret and the Man on the Bench was published in France in 1953, but was not available in English until 1975.

The M.O. wouldn't work........2005-09-01

The premise of this Maigret mystery is promising: A man found stabbed in a Paris alleyway with much more money in his pocket and wearing a different pair of shoes and tie than when he left his home in the morning. And why was he in the alley and not at work? These questions intrigue us and our Inspector as he attempts to find the murderer. But, the payoff is a huge dissapointment. First of all, there are crimes committed, but the M.O. of them is not feasible. Maybe, by luck, it could have worked once, twice at the very most, but when you consider it was used over and over within a few city blocks, it's impossible to think it would be successful. And further, the perp is caught due to police work in another city for which Maigret is the recipient of their determined efforts. He does very little to solve the case. The characters introduced in the book are quite interesting, but the plot and payoff are slow-going and disappointing. Not the best Maigret by a long shot.

For Maigret Afficionados.......2004-10-21

A man is found knifed in a Paris Alley. He is wearing "goose dung" brown shoes and not the black shoes he had on when he left home for work that morning. Thus begins "Maigret and the Man on the Bench".

During the long career of Georges Simenon, he published more than 200 novels and had more than 500 million copies of his books in print. When Georges Simenon is on, his Maigret stories are simply brilliant. When he is not at his best, the novels are merely good. This is a good novel that I would recommend for devotees of the Maigret mystery novels. I would not recommend the book for a first time Maigret reader. There are better novels with which to become aquainted with the venerable Jules Maigret.

Monsieur Monde Vanishes (New York Review Books Classics)

Average customer rating:

Psycological novel
"Let's take a boat to Bermuda
Businessman's Vacation
"Nothing lay behind him anymore: nothing lay before him as yet. He was in space."
A Wonderful Imaginary Diversion

Monsieur Monde Vanishes (New York Review Books Classics)
Georges Simenon
Manufacturer: NYRB Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1590170962
Release Date: 2004-07-31

Book Description

Monsieur Monde is a successful middle-aged businessman in Paris. One morning he walks out on his life, leaving his wife asleep in bed, leaving everything. Not long after, he surfaces on the Riviera, keeping company with drunks, whores and pimps, with thieves and their marks. A whole new world, where he feels surprisingly at home—at least for a while.

Georges Simenon knew how obsession, buried for years, can come to life, and about the wreckage it leaves behind. He had a remarkable understanding of how bizarrely unaccountable people can be. And he had an almost uncanny ability to capture the look and feel of a given place and time. Monsieur Monde Vanishes is a subtle and profoundly disturbing triumph by the most popular of the twentieth century's great writers.

Customer Reviews:

Psycological novel.......2007-05-07

This is a great book but one would never read it if one merely read the back cover copy which is totally inaccurate -- so inaccurate that one suspects the writer of the copy has never read the book. I have read M. Monde Vanishes many times in French (La Fuite de M. Monde) and given dozens copies of this excellent English translation to friends and acquaintances. M. Monde learns, in the course of his adventures after he flees his unhappy existence, that true freedom comes from inside -- one does not have to tear one's life apart, one can to change one's perspective. In Simenon's usual concise, brilliant style.

"Let's take a boat to Bermuda.......2007-04-04

Let's take a plane to Saint Paul.
Let's take a kayak to Quincy or Nyack,
Let's get away from it all."

I have to admit that Frank Sinatra version of "Let's Get Away From it All" kept entering my consciousness as I read George Simenon's "Monsieur Monde Vanishes". The upbeat nature of the song is not remotely like the dark, reflective tone of Simenon's story but if you have ever sat in your office on a dreary day or sat in your home on a humdrum evening and just wondered what it would be like to just walk away from your life and start fresh somewhere else then you will have some understanding and, perhaps, sympathy for a man who wakes up one morning and decides to get away from it all.

Simenon was nothing if not prolific in both his literary and public life. Born in Belgium in 1903, Simenon turned out hundreds of novels. Simenon's obsession with writing caused him to break off an affair (he was prolific in this area of his life as well) with the celebrated Josephine Baker in Paris when he could only write twelve novels in the twelve month period in which they were involved. Although perhaps best known for his Inspector Maigret detective novels, Simenon also wrote over a hundred novels that he referred to as `romans durs' (literally "hard novels"). As with many of his contemporaries such as Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books were marketed and sold as popular, almost pulp fiction. Also like Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books have stood up well over time. The New York Review of Books publishing division has reissued much of Simenon's books. They are well worth reading and "Monsieur Monde Vanishes" is an excellent place to start.

As with virtually all his protagonists in these hard stories, Monde is a stolid, middle-class member of the establishment. Based in Paris, Monde runs the family export/import business. His is a life of regular habits, from the time he wakes up, through his work day and then through the evening. He is married (a second wife) and has children. Beneath this surface regularity lies a yearning to get away, to just leave everything behind and as the book opens Monde does just that. The rest of the novel explores Monde's journey, his new identity, the places he goes (the French coast) and the people he meets. He sheds his stolid identity like someone sheds their clothing at night and finds himself in a world entirely different from the one he leaves behind. The reader witnesses this transformation in what can be best described as something of a voyeuristic fashion.

Simenon's hard novels are often referred to as psychological novels but I find that term a bit misleading. Simenon does not analyze. He does not delve deep into his protagonists' minds. He presents the reader with a slice of the human condition and lets the reader deal with the implications, the psychoanalysis if you like. They do offer glimpses into his protagonists' lives even though (or perhaps because) he does not fill in the blanks for you. His character's actions speak for themselves and what they have to say is not always pleasant. In "Monsieur Monde" we are not presented with an explanation for Monde's acts. They are simply provided to the reader. It is up to us to judge them or analyze them if we so choose. In a world of fiction filled with happiness and redemption and the ultimate triumph of good against evil, Simenon is a breath of fresh (if pessimistic) air. "Monsieur Monde" does break away from this mold a bit as I found there was a bit more `closure' (a hackneyed word to be sure but it seems suitable for use here) in "Monsieur Monde" than in some of his other works. Unlike some of his other books we see someone reclaim some of the responsibility he walked away from. However, the question that Simenon poses is a critical one, is the Monde that reenters the world left behind the same man?

"Let's take a trip in a trailer
No need to come back at all.
Let's take a powder to Boston for chowder,
Let's get away from it all."

"Monsieur Monde Vanishes" was an enjoyable book to read. Highly recommended. L. Fleisig

Businessman's Vacation.......2007-03-17

One of the values of Amazon's recommendation software is that you are directed to authors with whose work you may not be familiar and who are not carried on the shelves of most bookstores. This is how I found Monsieur Monde Vanishes. It is an economical and very visual book even though the visuals are of mostly unremarkable venues: cheap hotel rooms, the back office of a nightclub, train stations, etc. The narrative value, however, lies partly in bringing such sites to life.

The largely passive Monde exits his successful life in Paris to allow another life in Nice to happen to him. In the end, this change enables him to return to his prior existence possessed of enhanced stature with his business, his wife and his son. The breaking of his life pattern, even though he is compelled to return to it, seems to give Monde additional power over his environment.

Read this book and get swept up in the rhythm of an unspectacular life that is likely different than your own in detail but not in method.

"Nothing lay behind him anymore: nothing lay before him as yet. He was in space.".......2006-03-31

Norbert Monde is a responsible, successful Parisian businessman, but on his 48th birthday, he withdraws 300,000 francs from the bank and simply disappears. While his unpleasant wife descends on the police station, he takes a train to Marseilles and quickly becomes absorbed into a new life. Oddly enough, while many people would take the money and whoop it up somewhere glamorous, Monde becomes involved in a tawdry domestic drama.

Author Simenon (author of the Maigret series) subtly explores the possibilities and realities of escape through his protagonist's adventures. Monde's desire to simply step out of his life into another is traced back to a childhood memory. He's always picked up the slack left by the irresponsible behaviour of other people in his life, and then a simple trigger causes him to drop the burden of his old life with its accompanying heavy responsibilities. As Monde escapes, he asks himself, "Was life beginning at last?" But as the saying goes: 'wherever you go, there you are,' and Monde is still essentially respectable and responsible no matter the circumstances. He can dump his bourgeoisie life, but he can't step out of his skin, and so some patterns of behaviour are humorously repetitive.

Monde possesses striking emotional detachment from the drama that surrounds him, but at the same time the novel emphasizes sensory and tactile sensations. Exiled from the cushion of an upper-middle class existence, the odours of poverty assault Monde's nostrils almost immediately. Stimuli from various sensations flood into Monde's consciousness and his responses seem to be the only signs that he's functioning emotionally. A lifetime habit of allowing others to dictate his life has blunted his feelings to the point that they hardly exist. To some, this means he's a pushover, but Monde finally discovers long-buried resources of determination. In the seedy hotels and bars of Marseilles and Nice, Monde has an unexpected opportunity to resolve some old business and regain his humanity in the process. "Monsieur Monde Vanishes" is a dark novel certain to please Simenon fans--displacedhuman

A Wonderful Imaginary Diversion.......2006-03-23

A good friend of mine recommended Simenon books to me. This story is about a successful, middle-aged man who, obsessed with pursuing another life, one day decides to remove himself from everything that he has called his own. Leaving no trace of himself, he uproots himself and heads off in no particular direction. As he continues on his adventure, he encounters a number of enemies and companions all of whom help him realize a new self-awareness. But in the midst of this new comfort, his old life invades. He must then decide not only which life to embrace, but which self he will be.

Though this is the only book I've read so far from Georges Simenon, I'm certain it will not be the last. I appreciated his ability to write with a great economy of words and yet penetrate deep into my imagination. His style is simple, his story is believable, and the questions he raises are not easy to answer. All around, a good, challenging book.

For a full review go to my blog in my screen name and click on the Readings category

Maigret and the Killer (Maigret Mystery Series)

Average customer rating:

A man who crossed a barrier
When Maigret meets a serial killer ...
Great stuff, one of the best Maigrets

Maigret and the Killer (Maigret Mystery Series)
Georges Simenon
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0156028417

Book Description

Maigret, accompanying his physician on an emergency call, is drawn into one of his most stubborn cases yet. The victim, a son of a wealthy perfume manufacturer, had been enjoying an odd hobby before his death: collecting human voices with a tape recorder, often in the rougher districts of Paris. But his wallet and his tape recorder have been left untouched, so the killer's motive is unclear. The absence of clues begins to exasperate Maigret until an anonymous letter reveals that he is dealing with no ordinary criminal.

Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon.

Customer Reviews:

A man who crossed a barrier.......2005-03-08

The Maigrets ate on a monthly basis with Dr. Pardon and his wife. Dr. Pardon complained that medical doctors were being changed into clerks because of all of the paperwork required of them. Superintendent Maigret and Dr. Pardon went out to see a young man lying in the street, a victim of stabbing. Maigret had become involved in the case involuntarily.

In reporting the death to the family, Maigret learned that the young man's parents were very rich. The father was a perfume manufacturer. The young man had had few friends. He had an unusual hobby, recording conversations. The tape recorder was recovered.

Maigret called in Janvier. The importance given to the case by the press was surprising to both police officers. A description of the assailant was obtained. Maigret called upon his other two favorites, Lucas and Lapointe, to help with the case.

The young man had identified the places where he had made recordings. The police officers followed in his footsteps. Maigret had known professional criminals well, but he had never been that interested in them. It had all seemed like a game somehow.

On a stakeout four men, presumed art thieves, are arrested. Seemingly the young man doing the recording had stumbled upon a criminal plot. The killer called Maigret. He was a man who had crossed a barrier. It was a matter of diminished responsiblity. The tale is taut, lucid.

When Maigret meets a serial killer ..........2003-06-05

When Maigret meets a serial killer, it's a dramatic face to face and, as usually, Maigret can understand why the killer acts in such an horrible way. Maigret don't excuse the killer but can understand. Like said Simenon : "Understand but not judge".

Great stuff, one of the best Maigrets.......1999-05-19

This is one of my very favorite Simenon novels; superbly paced and brilliant characterizations.

Average customer rating:

Welcome to the Hotel Majestic

The Hotel Majestic (Penguin Mysteries)
Georges Simenon
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Mystery | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books

Hard-Boiled | Mystery | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0143038451

Book Description

<B>Penguin delivers two more vintage Inspector Maigret novels by the legendary mystery author</B>

In The Hotel Majestic, Maigret investigates the murder of Mrs. Clark, the wife of a wealthy American industrialist, whose strangled body is found in the basement of an upscale hotel near the Champs-Élysées. Maigret's inquiries take him from the endless corridors of the Hotel Majestic to the countryside of the Bois de Boulogne and sun-drenched Cannes, into a world of prostitution, drug addiction, and blackmail.

Customer Reviews:

Welcome to the Hotel Majestic.......2006-12-27

Georges Simenon was the author of over 100 Inspector Maigret mystery stories. They were immensely popular in the 1930s through the 1960s. Inspector Maigret stories also appeared in film and TV version. Simenon also authored dozens of books described as "romans durs", `hard stories' that had a darker tone than his Maigret novels. Simenon seems to have fallen under the radar in recent decades but in recent years he seems to have been rediscovered by a new generation of mystery/detective story fans. Penguin Books has begun to reissue some of those Maigret mysteries and the New York Review of Books Press has reissued some of his `hard stories', dark novels that did not feature Inspector Maigret. Penguin's latest Inspector Maigret Mystery reissue, "The Hotel Majestic" is as good a place to start for anyone wishing to discover (or re-discover) Simenon.

As with most police procedurals, the Hotel Majestic begins with a dead body. Mrs. Clark, a guest traveling with her wealthy American husband, their child and a governess, has been found murdered and stuffed into an empty locker in the basement of the Hotel Majestic. Maigret arrives to begin the investigation. His investigation quickly draws him into two parallel words: the world upstairs of champagne and caviar and the world downstairs filled with hotel employees eking out a living. Maigret's investigation begins with an examination into how and why these two different worlds collided in this brief but deadly incident. From there he proceeds to interview everyone and anyone who might have information about the crime of the victim. Maigret is no Sherlock Holmes. For Maigret, crimes are to be solved by a process of accumulating as much information as possible and then analyzing that information based on his past experience. Maigret plays hunches to be sure but Maigret's chief weapon is perseverance and determination. Consequently, the reader is presented with information about the crime and the protagonists in real time along with Maigret. As I read these stories I find myself absorbing these bits of information and trying to weigh them against the information previously disclosed. This served to keep me engaged throughout the book and caused me to keep turning page after page until the `final curtain'.

Simenon has a keen ear for dialogue and character development. Maigret is not a character that is revealed to the reader immediately. Simenon doesn't set about to provide you with a character map to Maigret's personality in any one book. Rather, he grows on you over time. He has an innate disdain for higher authority that is appealing. Simenon's settings and other characters also add a dash to his Maigret mysteries. These are not parlor room mysteries where the reader has to determine which upper-class member of the gentry (or the butler) committed murder most foul in the library. Simenon's stories have the feel of grit and the demimonde about them that adds a bit of spice to the `formula'. In Hotel Majestic, Simenon's description of the hard-streets and dark bars of Paris and the people that inhabit them all seem quite fully realized to me.

All in all, I find Simenon's Maigret mysteries to be consistently entertaining. They may not be as dark or foreboding as the novels released by New York Review of Books - but it you like well-written, taut, police procedurals you will like Georges Simenon's Hotel Majestic. Recommended. L. Fleisig

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