Book Review: "The Man From London" by Georges Simenon

I love reading a book by Georges Simenon every now and again. It has yet only been a year or so since I actually found out who he was and started reading his books. I have to admit, I did not really enjoy them at first and then, when I read “The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By”, my perspective began to change. I started to notice the darkness of some of Simenon’s writings and that at times, characters could be in a very noir-esque peril, which I enjoyed seeing on the screen and so, I enjoyed reading in these books. I have come across numerous Simenon books which I have enjoyed thoroughly: “The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By”, “Three Bedrooms in Manhattan” and one of the more recent ones I have read “Betty”. Simenon’s characters always seem to be those who have a choice between what they should do and what they want to do, which takes them down a morally unjust rabbit hole. In this newest addition to my Simenon bookshelf, “The Man From London”, I have to say that this was far darker and far more morally complex than a lot of the ones even from my list of favourite novels by him.

It starts off with introducing us to a signalman for a railway and his name is Maloin. He has been working the same job for thirty years: placing his cup of coffee in the same place, even getting his coffee and standing there, staring out at the trains - at the same time every day for thirty years. He never expects to see anything until some people get off a train, a Londoner is carrying a suitcase and hands it to another man. The man with the suitcase goes out into the near field and the other man follows - finally the stalker beats the man with the suitcase to death, the body and the suitcase ends up in the water. When Maloin runs to see what has happened, both body and suitcase are gone. The man has run off into the distance and he is left standing alone. His obsession with the movement from the mundane into something far more interesting begins to consume him. In this cross between a noir thriller and a psychodrama, Georges Simenon never really gives us all the information we need to solve the problem. And with this, more problems arise when the wife of the man on the run turns up - but her husband has not.

A brilliantly simplistic book, this novel concentrates on getting the story across whilst purposefully leaving out key information that will eventually come to change everything about our main character - Maloin. From the point where his world completely changes, as he works his way through a different aspect of society and as he now has to deal with the authorities on the case, we see him not only change in his mental capabilities to understand the situation, but we see his whole personality seem to take on something different, something darker. But who is Maloin? Can Maloin simply be the everyman? The question will hang on your lips until the very end of the book and then, questions will required to be answered such as: what happened to the body and the suitcase? Where is the suitcase now? What was inside? Simenon gives hints and clues in this book as to what really happened that night and when you hit the end of the book, you will sit there staring at the wall and wondering how you never saw it coming.