Mr. Hire is more than a solitary man. His furtive and vaguely creepy countenance has set his neighbors, in the Villejuif neighborhood on the outskirts of Paris, against him. When a prostitute is found dead in a nearby vacant lot, there aren’t a lot of clues. But it’s not long before that distrust and unease comes to the fore and the concierge in the building where Mr. Hire lives points the finger at him.
What we know is that he couldn’t have done it, because he spends every evening standing at his window in the dark, watching the voluptuous young woman across the courtyard as she undresses and prepares for bed. As the story progresses, Alice, that young woman, comes to realize what Mr. Hire has been doing and sets about using this against him. It does not end well.
**SPOILERS**
This is one of Simenon’s first romans durs (1933),and the most powerful one I have read yet. Mr. Hire is an interesti ng protagonist because he is unsettling in an ineffable way and outside the norms of his society. It’s true he is a voyeur, he has a record and a borderline illegal business, but he is no murderer. Eliciting sympathy for such a character shows what a deft touch Simenon has. We are not privy to Mr. Hire’s thoughts and motivations for the most part; the book doesn’t delve into that, not in the sense of the modern psychological novel. We come to understand these characters motivations by their actions and the tension builds inexorably to Mr. Hire’s sadly inevitable demise. It is a chilling denouement, made more profound when I read this edition’s afterword, written by John Gray. As a cub reporter, Simenon witnessed a bar fight that turned into a riot, which in turn became a lynch mob after a totally unrelated man, who in trying to escape them, traversed the rooftops until he slipped and was left hanging from the cornice of the building. Ascribing this fate to Mr. Hire adds even more gravity and pathos to this terrific novel.
