"The Man from London" by Georges Simenon is a compelling and atmospheric crime novel that immerses you in a world of mystery and intrigue. Simenon's writing is taut and suspenseful, and his iconic detective, Inspector Maigret, is a brilliant and nuanced character. Set against the backdrop of a post-war European city, this book is a captivating exploration of human nature, morality, and the consequences of our actions. If you're a fan of classic crime fiction with intricate plots and well-drawn characters, "The Man from London" is a must-read that will keep you guessing until the very end.

I have received this Author's title via NetGalley, I was wonderfully delighted to get the chance to read it. This type of storytelling is my favourite and I could not be stopped being immersed in everything that happened with main characters who get hold of big pile of British pounds from someone and then plan on how to put it to best use majority father and daughter.

When you see that a book is written by Georges Simeon you tend to think ‘Maigret’; in this case you would be wrong. This is one of his other books of human nature mixed in with international crime crossing the English Channel set in 1935. The study in human nature has to be set in that era and the behaviour of the characters seen in that scenario. The railway signalmans’ attitude towards his family is generally cruel with flashes of kindness, but his initial greed over a suitcase of money ends up as surrendering to his better nature by its return to the rightful owner and he then pays the penalty of manslaughter with 5 years in jail.
This was a struggle to read and the ending was too abrupt when related to the more rambling nature of the rest of the book.

We meet Maloin, a middle-aged railway worker, in the 1930s just as he witnesses a fight between two men at the docks from his position in the railway box one night. The fight, between two men and over a bag, quickly becomes a case of murder when one man falls in the water, taking the bag with him.

Maloin, investigating further once the “man from London” has fled the scene, finds the bag which turns out to be stuffed full of money. What follows is then a study of Maloin’s reaction to finding the money. His relationships with his family struggle as he grapples with his conscience, and the tension builds as he starts to encounter the killer around the town.

One of Georges Simenon’s roman durs (hard novels), this is a character study rather than detective fiction. All of the characters are pretty unsympathetic and flawed, but all the more believable for that.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc to review.

The case of a voyeur up in the sky and what he decides to do with what he sees. Becoming a protagonist in this story of murder, greed, sadness, bad luck, and chances taken.

As usual Simenon know how to just get into the characters and with well honed script well travelled in the human psyche.

This was a wonderfully deep and dark crime novel that kept me gripped all the way through, Simenon is best known for his Maigret mysteries, and The Man From London is very different from those. There is no real mystery there, just a growing sense of doom, as the protagonist (a railway signalman at a port, who witnesses a crime), gets dragged deeper and deeper into peril.
It's a book at making the wrong decision and the impacts of that on the soul.

I haven’t read Georges Simenon before and I had expected this to be a Maigret book and it isn’t. But it is excellent and I will be reading more by Simenon. He is a master of pacing, of description, of creating an atmosphere and mood. This book concerns a man on the port of Dieppe who sees a scuffle and something fall into the water. He retrieves the package and his life falls apart. Slowly and menacingly Simenon builds up the sense of dread as a man falls apart and becomes deeper and deeper involved in lies and subterfuge.

This has elements of Russian literature for me. It is intelligent and thought provoking and very well written. As I say, I will be looking out for more from Georges Simenon.

I was given a copy of this book by Netgalley

This is not an Inspector Maigret mystery as you might expect from Georges Simenon. Instead The Man from London is told from perspective of Maloin, who witnesses a murder while working as a signalman at a ferry terminal in France. But otherwise it's written in Simenon's classic and very distinctive style. That is, the reader is like a silent observer following Maloin around, seeing and hearing everything as it happens. That perspective makes for intense and somewhat disturbing reading which accounts for my 4 star rating. I won't say more to prevent revealing the unexpected ending. My thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an advance copy of The Man from London for this independent review.

A railway signalman is witness to a murder in the port of Dieppe. A mere observer at first, he ends up becoming involved in the murder more than he could have bargained for.

Georges Simenon’s Maigret novels are very much a classic and so I was eager to read a book by one of Belgium’s most famous authors. Originally published in 1934, but recently translated by Curtis, this book is not a Maigret novel, but an atmospheric murder all the same. It’s not really a murder mystery, as I’d been expecting, since we are witness to the murder in the first 10 pages of the book. Instead, it’s more a story of a man witnessing a murder and then grappling with his conscience. I enjoyed the cat and mouse dynamic of our witness and the murderer, and the blurring of boundaries. They are both chasing each other, yet seem to both be frightened of the consequences of catching up with the other.

I’ll be honest and say I didn’t find this book totally groundbreaking. Which doesn’t mean it’s not a good book, I think I’ve just become so desensitised to murder in books that I felt like this book was lacking something. It’s a nice story, very atmospheric and the cold wintry nights felt like the perfect setting. However I think the shortness of this novella meant there wasn’t really any buildup; as I mentioned, the murder takes place in the first 10 ish pages and to me the rest of the book then felt anticlimactic. It is, however a very quick and easy read; I read it in over about two hours. Nevertheless, I’m pleased I read this and I did really enjoy the scene setting and the moral dilemma faced by our protagonist. Particularly the musings on the way money can simultaneously bring joy and disaster. Well translated by Curtis, this novella very much felt like a classical piece of Belgian literature (even if it does take place in France😅).

Very grateful to have been sent an ebook by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Bearing in mind this story was written some 90 years ago, it’s timeless in many ways. I’d forgotten just how well Simenon writes. Set in Dieppe, a signalman witnesses a murder and then finds a suitcase full of money. His description of the harbour and activities there are really well portrayed. The central character is dour and not very likeable, but nevertheless the reader starts to feel his anguish as he attempts to resolve the moral dilemmas he faces.

This is a short read, but powerful and compelling read and I’m going to look out a few more of these timeless tales.

My thanks to the publisher for a review copy via Netgalley.

"It was stupid, but that's the way it was! The most revolting thing was that it could have been different. It had all been down to chance".

A short story of a poor signal man who, either by luck or misfortune, is a witness to murder and finds a suitcase with a large sum of money. The tale recalls his battle within and internal conflict surrounding what to do with the money and the original owner's search to recover it.

The story is short but sweet, presenting a moral dilemma everyone knows in one way or another. The author doesn't need to say a lot to get his message across and instead relies on the reader to use their imagination and place themselves in the role of the protagonist. There are few likeable characters but a lot of realistic and raw moments.

An enjoyable read.

4/5

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

Inspector Mollinson is NOT like Maigret, Simenon's famous detective .. lacks that empathy and kindness .. but it's the 'crook'who is the central figure here. We wonder throughout what he'll decide to do in this spare and gripping crime story of an ordinary man with overwhelming dilemma of witnessing a lethal crime .. his ordinary response means he's our focus. How would we behave? ..

Lead us not into temptation…

Maloin is a railway signalman who works the night-shift in the signal box at Dieppe, overlooking the harbour. One night, he’s watching the various arrivals and departures of cross-channel ferries as usual when he spots one man throwing a suitcase over the fence to another man, thus avoiding customs. Maloin shrugs – smuggling is commonplace and he’d probably do it himself. But when he later sees the two men fighting over the suitcase and then one of them killing the other, during which the suitcase falls in the dock, he doesn’t do what he knows he should – inform the authorities. Instead, he uses his knowledge of the tides to retrieve the suitcase, which he finds to be full of English banknotes…

This was my introduction to Simenon’s non-Maigret books, and turned out to be a very good one to begin with. It’s a study of a weak man whose greed leads him into an act of which he would not have thought himself capable, and the consequences on his character of the guilt and fear that follow.

Simenon’s settings are always one of his main strengths, and here he gives a great picture of the working life of Dieppe – the shopkeepers, the people who make their living from the fish and shellfish in the sea and on the shore, the hotels and bars, the rather downbeat, humdrum sex trade, and the transient travellers, mostly passing through on their way to somewhere more exciting. Too big to be a place where everyone knows everyone else, it still has a small town feel – the inhabitants carefully graded according to their station in life.

Maloin is an unpleasant character even before he gets himself involved in crime – bullying to his wife and children, using the services of the local prostitute whenever he feels the need to bolster his ego and prove himself a man, jealous of anyone to whom he feels socially inferior. His night work suits his rather misanthropic personality, allowing him to spend his working hours alone and giving him the days free to pursue his hobbies. His family are used to being quiet around the house so as not to disturb his daytime sleep, and mostly they propitiate him so as to avoid his outbursts of unreasonable anger.

But once he commits the act of retrieving the suitcase he sees visions of wealth and at first feels no guilt. However, seeing the murderer searching for the suitcase, he feels the first chill of fear, and as the police become involved in the hunt, first for the money, and then for the murderer, he finds himself entirely consumed by it to the point where he can’t sleep or concentrate on anything else. And then the guilt begins. Without going further into the story to avoid spoilers, it’s a very credible picture of how someone without any particular intelligence and a loose moral compass might behave when temptation comes his way. Maloin’s plans for how to convert the money to francs, how to explain its sudden acquisition, never get past the woolly stage, and meantime he finds himself getting sucked into a quagmire of deceit and a criminal investigation that is growing more serious by the day. What seemed at first like a minor transgression is gradually destroying his state of mind.

Novella length, this doesn’t waste any time on unnecessary padding – the length of the book is dictated by how long it takes to tell the story, a skill Simenon had in spades and which many a modern crime writer would do well to emulate. The suspense element is excellent – while Maloin behaves consistently with the character Simenon has created for him, it’s nevertheless not at all clear where his fear and guilt will ultimately lead him. And I found the ending entirely satisfactory, showing once again that sudden twists are not necessary to produce true suspense – it’s the fundamental unpredictability of human behaviour that does that.

This will certainly encourage me to seek out more of Simenon’s non-Maigret work. I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it more or thought it was better, exactly, but it has a somewhat different, darker feel and that aspect of being a story complete in itself that I always appreciate in stand-alones, without losing the features I always enjoy most in Maigret – the settings and the characters of his villains. 4½ stars for me, so rounded up.

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Penguin Classics via NetGalley.

Having read all his Maigret novels. I was delighted to see one ofGeorges Simenon ‘s other crime thrillers was also being re-published.

The man from London is a quiet brooding novel about a railway employee who witnesses a crime. From his vantage point working nights he is able to retrieve a suitcase which he assumes is some kind of contraband.
Well he is debating in his own mind what he should do; he becomes aware that the “rightful owner” of the case his following him.

He is an Englishmen using the name Mr Brown and he follows but stops short of challenging the Frenchman who he suspects has witnessed the events and taken the suitcase for himself.

Maloin is unsettled by this as he believes Mr Brown is a thief and a murderer. Who knows about his life, where he works and where he lives.

Meanwhile an English detective from Scotland Yard arrives with an elderly man who was the victim of the robbery.
If Old Michell just gets the contents of the case back he’ll not press charges.

The psychology of Maloin’s behaviour; his temptations but also an affinity for Brown is what interests Simenon.

A quite fascinating tale where Maloin even imagines he could have been friends under different circumstances.

Events seem to overtake Maloin and all his good intentions lead to a thrilling conclusion after he and Brown meet.

Missed the mind of a Maigret making sense of this all, but Maloin is a complex character who appears never to have gained authority and respect other than the warm greetings he gets around the town of Dieppe. His dreams are re-imagined here but you fear he has insufficient friends or counsel to extricate himself from this situation.

Thank you Netgalley. This novella from Mr. Simenon was a gripping read and held my interest throughout. I recommend it highly.

In this story, a railway signal man watches a murder on the dock in which one man pushes another off the pier and the victim grabs a suitcase the two were struggling over. Down they both go into the sea, and has the murder seen him before disappearing? He quickly goes down and retrieves the suitcase to find it contains a huge sum of British notes, and instead of notifying the police he locks it in his cupboard at the signal station. But it appears that he is followed by the killer.

Another spectacular story from the late, great, and immensely prolific Georges Simenon. Thank you so much for republishing these treasures.

This isn't a grab you by the throat thriller. Its is a slow build. One man's battle against his conscience. You have no idea how it is going to end until it does. An atmospheric slow burner.

Louis Maloin is a middle aged railway signalman whose box overlooks the harbour at Dieppe. Passengers disembark from the Newhaven Ferry to continue their journey by train, so he has a great view of the port. Mailon works the night shift and one evening he sees a passenger throw a suitcase to an accomplice on the dock to avoid it having to go through Customs. Intrigued, he later sees the pair in an argument as they leave a nearby bar. A struggle ensues and one of the men and the suitcase end up in the harbour.

Mailon investigates and retrieves the suitcase before the attacker has a chance to search for it. He discovers that its contents could make a big difference to his life. But, along with the reader, he becomes increasingly anxious as the murderer silently and then the police start to close in.

Simenon’s capture of the place and his characters is sublime. Mailon is not an admirable man: he is aggressive and abusive, gets into bar fights and uses the port brothel. Just when his fortune looks to be on the point of changing, his world folds in on him in an unsettling series of twists which absorb the reader who shared his vantage point on the original crime.

This is another masterpiece of atmospheric writing from Simenon. I am a huge fan of his and would happily read any and all his books. Superb!

A wonderfully atmospheric and claustrophobic psychological thriller set in a damp and gloomy Dieppe in the 1930s. A railway signalman watches a fight, apparently over a suitcase, on the dockside and finds himself impelled to investigate rather than report a possible crime. Almost against his will he determines to recover the suitcase and gradually becomes more and more conflicted in an internal struggle between temptation and greed, and his conscience and sense of guilt. Under pressure he begins to disintegrate and the spectacle is engrossing and convincing. Simenon’s characterisation is astutely observed, and his cool and detached style adds to the bleakness of the narrative. A short, but powerful, read.

The Man from London is my first Georges Simenon book (I haven’t read any of the Maigret novels, though I feel that I should have done by now), so I didn’t really know what to expect from it. I was pleased to find that it was suspenseful, atmospheric and, in this translation by Howard Curtis, very readable.

The story begins on a cold, foggy night in Dieppe, where railway signalman Louis Maloin is sitting alone in his watchtower, looking down on the docks at the ferry just arriving from England. It’s a sight Maloin observes every day, but tonight something is different: he watches one of the newly arrived passengers fight with another man and knock him into the water, along with the suitcase he is holding. Aware that he appears to be the only person who has seen this happen, Maloin retrieves the case from the water when nobody is around and takes it home with him. When he discovers what the case contains, the decision he makes could have consequences that will change his life forever.

Although there is an element of mystery to the book, with questions over the identities of the two men and where the contents of the case came from, this is really more of a psychological thriller than a crime novel. The fight Maloin witnesses and his reaction to it provides a starting point for an exploration of the state of Maloin’s mind as the process he has set in motion spirals out of control. He experiences every conceivable emotion over the course of the story, ranging from guilt at not telling the police what he has seen and allowing a murderer to walk free, excitement at gaining possession of the case for himself, and terror, knowing that someone could discover what he has done at any minute.

The atmosphere Simenon creates is wonderful, with the tension building and building as Maloin tries to go about his normal life, while being confronted at every turn by the face of the man he has come to think of as ‘the man from London’. The wet, foggy December weather adds to the overall mood, as do the descriptions of the places and people Maloin encounters as he moves around Dieppe trying to avoid the murderer and the police.

The short length of the book meant it held my interest from beginning to end and although I think the potential was here for a longer and more complex novel, I still found it quite satisfying. I’m glad my first experience of Georges Simenon’s work was a good one and I’m definitely interested in reading more of his books now.