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adam_mcphee 's review for:
The Venice Train
by Alastair Hamilton, Georges Simenon
Starts with a No Country for Old Men premise (man comes into illicit, unearned money and finds himself looking over his shoulder) but quickly moves onto more of an early Breaking Bad footing (protagonist alienates himself from his family with the secret of their newfound wealth).
It is really amazing how much Simenon is able to wring out of his basic formula: start things off with a simple crime or an affair or some other event that brings a man away from his normal life, use the crime not to give us plot but to give us context for the character's life (the setting, his backstory), and spend about a hundred pages just going into the man's psychology. I've read maybe a dozen of his romans durs now but I still don't see myself ever tiring of them. I suppose it helps that they're all fairly short.
There's not much action in the book (the criminal aspect quickly fades away) but a lot of great reflections on what it does to you to keep secrets from your most-trusted, to want to provide but to be unable, on the nervous toll of hiding money, and how acting alone without declaring our intentions often leads to a self-betrayal.
I liked how the ending suddenly brought the protagonist's private life embarrassingly into public view just as he betrayed himself in the worst way, but his sudden suicide was rash to the point of being unbelievable, a cheap gimmick to close the novel with a bit of unnecessary action. Really the proper punishment would have been to have him live with his embarrassment.
It is really amazing how much Simenon is able to wring out of his basic formula: start things off with a simple crime or an affair or some other event that brings a man away from his normal life, use the crime not to give us plot but to give us context for the character's life (the setting, his backstory), and spend about a hundred pages just going into the man's psychology. I've read maybe a dozen of his romans durs now but I still don't see myself ever tiring of them. I suppose it helps that they're all fairly short.
There's not much action in the book (the criminal aspect quickly fades away) but a lot of great reflections on what it does to you to keep secrets from your most-trusted, to want to provide but to be unable, on the nervous toll of hiding money, and how acting alone without declaring our intentions often leads to a self-betrayal.
I liked how the ending suddenly brought the protagonist's private life embarrassingly into public view just as he betrayed himself in the worst way, but his sudden suicide was rash to the point of being unbelievable, a cheap gimmick to close the novel with a bit of unnecessary action. Really the proper punishment would have been to have him live with his embarrassment.