The unlikable narrator Frank is alienated, living in his mother’s brothel under the wartime occupation, pampered and at ease when almost all around him are distressed. He decides to start killing for the most mundane of reasons. It’s a case of Doestoevsky meets Jim Thompson’s the killer inside me. He then courts disaster, choosing to behave increasingly recklessly as if he has a death wish. The occupation catches up with him.

Noir, dread and worse. This is a nasty book, you feel nasty for reading it and I think this is Simenon’s point. The war was nasty, the occupation was nasty, the distortions of world war II are at work here. A nasty piece of work and yet I like it.