Monsieur Monde Vanishes (1945) by George Simenon
Pbk., New York Review Books Classics, 144 pp.
Monsieur Monde is a successful middle-aged businessman in Paris. One morning he walks out on his life, leaving his wife asleep in bed, leaving everything. Not long after, he surfaces on the Riviera, keeping company with drunks, whores and pimps, with thieves and their marks. A whole new world, where he feels surprisingly at home—at least for a while.
This is the first Simenon book that I have read. It seems amazing to me that I have never come across him given my love of mystery books and the copious number of novels that he has written. Really though, this book at least, is not strictly a mystery. It is more of a psychological portrait of a man. If you have ever read any Patricia Highsmith then I would say that this is closest to that.
A very entertaining novel that has set me on the path to reading more Simenon.
1 comment:
Simenon wrote the Maigret mysteries, for which he became famous, and he wrote a handful of mystery psychological novels. This is one of them.
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