Van der Valk is dispatched to the small town of Zwinderen in the north-east of Holland, where a series of poison pen letters have been sent to residents and two women have committed suicide. The local police are (of course) baffled. Freeling’s Amsterdam inspector is a close cousin of Simenon’s Maigret. Both detectives like to … Continue reading Double Barrel / Nicolas Freeling
Simenon
Tropic Moon
Try as he might, he could not account for it, this feeling of depression and foreboding that had taken possession of him. This is the feeling that weighs upon young Frenchman Joseph Timar on his arrival in Libreville, Gabon, to take up a position on a logging concession in the interior of the country. Finding … Continue reading Tropic Moon
The Lodger
The snow had melted. Fields and forests were black as ink. The whole visible world was saturated with moisture, exuding a cold, dank vapour. The backdrop to The Lodger is a dismal, wintry Belgium. First Brussels, then the bleak mining town of Charleroi, where the protagonist, Elias Nagear, holes up in a dreary boarding house … Continue reading The Lodger
The Girl in His Past
The Girl in His Past opens like a B-movie. A man drives through a rain swept forest, breaks down, finds his way to a country inn, and then, as the locals eavesdrop, telephones the operator: ‘I’d like to speak to the police, Murder Division.’ Alberte Bauche, a twenty-eight-year-old journalist, has killed his employer – and … Continue reading The Girl in His Past
Uncle Charles
The original title of Uncle Charles is Oncle Charles s’est enfermé – Uncle Charles has locked himself in - and this is exactly what happens at the beginning of the novel: Charles Dupeux returns from work, goes upstairs and barricades himself in the attic. Downstairs, his wife, Laurence, and his three daughters take their evening … Continue reading Uncle Charles
The Family Lie
As his son lies in bed with diphtheria, a Paris doctor, Edouard Malempin, struggles to remember the details of his own childhood, jotting down his recollections in a school exercise book. Again and again, Malempin reminds us of the unreliable nature of his memory: ‘I’m not sure’; ‘I don’t remember’; ‘There what I remember ends’; … Continue reading The Family Lie
The Others
There are no happy families in Simenon. The Others concerns one such family, the provincial bourgeois Huets, whose tensions and grudges are thrown into relief by the suicide of the wealthy patriarch of the clan, Uncle Antoine. The novel is narrated, loosely in the form of a diary, by Antoine’s nephew, Blaise, a dissatisfied art … Continue reading The Others
The Glass Cage
Émile Virieu, 44, is a proof-reader for a Paris printing firm. He works in a glass cage in the centre of the office, cut off from his colleagues. He is married to an unattractive translator, Jeanne, with whom he shares some companionship, but neither a bed nor conversation. Virieu’s life follows a strict routine – … Continue reading The Glass Cage
Graeme Macrae Burnet 