First published in 1940, a Georges Simenon non-Maigret roman durs or “hard novel,” a penetrating psychological study of Hector Loursat, a man who was a brilliant attorney in his younger days, awakened from his eighteen-year hermit-like existence by a murder committed in his own house. And why had Hector Loursat been living like a hermit all those years? For one very simple reason: without any explanation, Hector’s wife suddenly vanished, leaving him for another man, abandoned him and their two-year old daughter Nicole, left them both and the city of Moulins for good.
Moulins. Located on the banks of the Allier River in central France, the atmosphere of this rainy French city with its cold air and wet streets, drab storefronts and even drabber courthouse, makes its presence felt on every page. "That evening Loursat stoked up his stove with special care, as the cold and the wet outside made the misty atmosphere indoors all the more luxurious. He could hear the patter of the rain and now and again the creaking hinge of a shutter that hadn't been properly closed and was caught by one of the sudden gusts of wind that swept along the street."
And its on this cold, rainy autumn evening the story's drama begins: like a crack of a whip but with more weight, more percussion, a sound not from outside but definitely inside, a sound prompts Hector Loursat, after draining yet another glass of Burgundy and putting his cigarette back in his mouth, to rouse himself from his comfortable den chair and venture through hallways, stairways and rooms he hadn't set eyes on in years.
Convinced the sound he heard was, in fact, the shot of a gun, Loursat makes his way to the other end of the house and knocks on Nicole’s bedroom door. Just then he catches the briefest glimpse of a disappearing figure, probably a man, stepping briskly down a set of stairs. Nicole, who is now a twenty-year old young lady, opens the door and asks her father what he wants. Without question, one of the most appealing and tender parts of the novel’s unfolding drama is how father and daughter come together to form a legal team in their efforts to solve the murder mystery.
Detecting the scent of gunpowder, Loursat climbs stairs, Nicole trailing behind, and searches the third floor until he switches a light on in one of the rooms and discovers two eyes staring at him. A man, a large man, in bed, half covered in bedclothes gurgles, no wails, and then slumps over dead. Nicole gazes at her father, as if the most shocking thing in the room isn’t the dead man but her father standing before her, calm and weighty.
A stranger in the house, shot dead, the event that shakes Loursat out of his routine of walling himself in his den day and night, drinking, smoking, reading poetry and philosophy, a routine only punctuated by meals with Nicole (eating only; in all those years he never really exchanged words with his daughter) and a daily walk, “the sort of walk you take to exercise a small dog, in fact he almost gave the impression of holding himself on a leash. The walk consisted of going around four blocks of houses, never more, never less.”
For me, in addition to all the vintage Simenon laser-sharp character studies, a fascinating read on two counts: First, the novel’s structure – Part One, Hunting down the clues and reconstructing the facts in the aftermath of the murder; Part Two, the court case itself. In the hands of Georges Simenon, this tried and true lawyer fiction formula packs a punch. Second, how his eighteen years as a recluse puts Hector Loursant in touch with his own teenage years, a loner studying poetry and philosophy, thus giving him great insight and feeling for the emotions of the young adults that formed the city’s gang associated with Big Louie, the murder victim. Turns out, Loursant's insights and feelings serve him well in his reentry into the world of action and his role as lawyer. A probing existential novel that will keep you turning the pages.
P. D. James in her Introduction to this New York Review Books (NYRB) edition of The Strangers in the House: "Simenon is brilliant at selecting the salient facts which bring alive a character or a place, inducing the reader to contribute his own imagination to that of the writer so that more is conveyed than is written."
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