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Georges Simenon's chilling portrayal of tragic love, persecution and betrayal.'One sensed in him neither flesh nor bone, nothing but soft, flaccid matter, so much so that his movements were hard to make out. Very red lips stood out from his orb-like face, as did the thin moustache that he curled with an iron and looked as if it had been drawn on with India ink; on his cheekbones were the symmetrical pink dots of a doll's cheeks.'People find Mr Hire strange, disconcerting. The tenants he shares his building with try to avoid him. He is a peeping Tom, a visitor of prostitutes, a dealer in unsavoury literature. He is also the prime suspect for a brutal murder that he did not commit. Yet Mr Hire's innocence will not stand in the way of those looking for a scapegoat as tragedy unfolds in this quietly devastating and deeply unnerving novel. 'Theromans dursare extraordinary- tough, bleak, offhandedly violent, suffused with guilt and bitterness, redolent of place . . . utterly unsentimental, frightening in the pitilessness of their gaze, yet wonderfully entertaining' John Banville… (more)
User reviews
Simenon's genius here is a combination of his ability to build up the reader's sympathy for Mr Hire, and simultaneously -- and almost imperceptibly -- to transform a humdrum recounting of daily minutiae into a truly suspenseful thriller. Simenon's an existentialist, to be sure, but he's not heartless; on the contrary, his sympathy for sad ordinary people shines through on every page.
It's a surprisingly simple storyline, and we see roughly where it’s headed a long time before the end, but Simenon handles it very cleverly, building up the atmosphere with cunning use of repetition and trivial detail. When it comes to the pursuit sequences, he shows off his real mastery of the genre: there aren't many writers who can get anything like the psychological mileage Simenon gets out of a Métro ticket. Maybe Patricia Highsmith?
The only place where Simenon perhaps shows his inexperience a bit is in the ludicrously-overdone final sequence. Although perhaps there is some method in his madness even there: semi-comic grand-guignol is a lot less likely to go wrong and upset the readers than an attempt at real tragedy, which can so easily turn into mere sentiment. And it's a great hook for any film producer who might happen to come across your work...
"He began to hear noises, at first weak, and anonymous --creaks, footsteps, collisions-- and soon he could feel his entire universe, with this room at its center, dissolving into the furtive sounds."
One of Simenon's best.