I greatly enjoyed the film Monsieur Hire (1989), which was based on this novel. While browsing for other books, I happened to come across the Penguin edition, featuring a striking black-and-white photograph of a woman seen from behind, standing in front of a window. Although the film differs from the novel in several respects, Simenon manages, in just 150 pages, to create a remarkably convincing noirish world of alienation and loneliness.
The protagonist, Monsieur Hire, appears somewhat strange and withdrawn, which leads the police, his neighbours, and the local community to suspect him of murdering a prostitute. Yet Simenon is far less interested in revealing either the killer or the victim than in exploring the psychology of an isolated individual. The murder mystery remains in the background, while the novel focuses on an understated portrait of existential anxiety.
Hire is a timid, frustrated, and profoundly lonely man, but at the same time he longs for love, even as he fears it. One of the most memorable moments comes near the end of the novel, when a fireman remarks, "He died of a stroke, as if he had been frightened." In a way, that single sentence seems to summarize Hire's entire existence—a man whose life has been shaped by fear.
The novel reminded me of The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes, In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes, and The Tenant by Roland Topor, as all four works explore, in different ways, loneliness, alienation, and the suspicion that society directs toward those who fail to fit in.
