The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 27 November 2023
by Georges Simenon
Belgium-born (Liége, 1903) author Georges Simenon was a prolific author of crime and mystery novels, as well as a number of less easily categorized thrillers and other often dark tales. He is most famous for creating the character of Jules Maigret, a police commissioner who dominated dozens of novels and stories and defined much of the genre for countless later authors. Among the number of non-Maigret novels is this short gloomy mystery set in a semi-rural French landscape of villages, farms and train stations. Tony Falcone was born in this town, but moved away, only to return and that return regarded with suspicion from his neighbors. That and his Italian heritage mark him as a "foreigner". He has a comfortable business selling tractors and parts, a wife and a daughter. He also has a mistress, Andrée.
The book opens in the afterglow of sex in the blue room of an inn near a train station and run by Tony's brother. Indeed, the book gets explicit within just a few sentences of its opening line, and, at least in the descriptions of Tony and Andrée's lust, it will remain explicit. Simenon constructs his story with unmarked shifts in time and in the characters present on the page. Something tragic and awful has happened. Tony is implicated and is investigated by the police, a doctor and a psychologist. He tries to explain what happened, and where his guilt lies. What appears evident is that Tony is telling a story that the reader might believe but that the investigators do not. He is a victim both of the investigators' incredulity and what begins to feel like a frame-up. We're not even certain of the crime until three quarters of the way through this short novel. There is an existential quality to Tony's fate, here, not entirely unlike that in Camus' The Stranger. The reader may wonder why Tony is inclined to surrender. What is left is a kind of grim hopelessess. Is it fate or merely despair? It is a dark and compellingly constructed tale.
Also by Simenon: [Maigret in Montmartre] [A Battle of Nerves] [At the `Gai-Moulin']