Der Mann der den Zügen nachsah

I am not a big fan of detective novels. Simenon is famous for his novels with detective Maigret as main character. To raise my reservation even further: Simenon wrote over 200 novels in his lifetime. But his book was recommended by-own critics of a prestigious newspaper in Germany. I gave it a chance I do not regret it. It is not just about crime and how to get the author of it. It is about what someone really wants and what society perceives about it. The book is written from the perspective of the ‘criminal’ and its inner world. He is an accountant, with wife and daughter. At teh beginning his boos tells him that the company will go bankrupt and that he (the boss and company owner) had already transferred the money to London to begin a new life. The accountant is left without job and pension since he invested his own money in the company. He decides to do the same does what he always wanted: he takes a train (the title of the book means: The man who looked after the passing trains) and leaves the town, he ends up in Paris and in France’s countryside leaving some dead bodies on his way. He is not furious or mad. he himself is surprised how it happens and creates always perfectly sensible reasons for the why. I stop here, I do not want to spoil future reader’s enjoyment to read.