The town itself was no more than a barren landscape which stretched out on all sides of the dark little burrow, with a little stove, furnished with books and bottles of burgundy, in which henceforth Hector Lousat was to live aloof in haughty isolation.
--Georges Simenon, The Stranger in the House (translated by Geoffrey Sainsbury, Doubleday, 1940)
The Stranger in the House is one of Simenon's "romans durs," though it is not as hard-boiled as some of his other non-Maigret novels and may even have been influenced by Erle Stanley Gardner, as lawyer Lousat comes out of his eighteen-year isolation in the bedroom of his increasingly seedy mansion to defend his daughter's lover from a murder that took place under his own roof. The novel takes place in the small town of Moulins in central France, where Lousat sneers at his bourgeois relatives and neighbors and where his daughter Nicole -- who had been left with her father when her mother ran off with another man --has been playing increasingly dangerous games with a bad crowd.
Lousat, until the murder, has spent his time reading and drinking but suddenly finds a new purpose and mostly stops drinking long enough to investigate the murder and keep Nicole's lover, Emile Manu, from being railroaded. Simenon's class-conscious novel vividly brings to life all the denizen of the town, from the shopkeepers to the police and the judges. With considerable effort Lousat is able to reveal the true murderer, though the only change in his life -- as Nicole and Emile move to Paris -- is to at least have a drink in a bar occasionally.
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