Known for his pure understatement, Simenon is able to conjure a world with a few simple brushstrokes; his depth of insight and characterisation are always rewarding, as is his knowledge of what motivates human beings.
'Try to imagine a guest, a wealthy woman, staying at the Majestic with her husband, her son, a nurse and a governess . . . In a suite that costs more than a thousand francs a day . . . At six in the morning, she's strangled, not in her room, but in the basement locker room'
Below stairs at a glamorous hotel on the Champs-Elysees, the workers' lives are worlds away from the luxury enjoyed by the wealthy guests. When their worlds meet, Maigret discovers a tragic story of ambition, blackmail and unrequited love.…
Profound, stylistic, and unique as well as insightful, this is a look at the dark side of the human unconscious and a relationship founded on the illusory projection of need, a sharp, resonant story about human identity.
Contempt is a brilliant and unsettling work by one of the revolutionary masters of modern European literature. All the qualities for which Alberto Moravia is justly famous—his cool clarity of expression, his exacting attention to psychological complexity and social pretension, his still-striking openness about sex—are evident in this story of a failing marriage. Contempt (which was to inspire Jean-Luc Godard's no-less-celebrated film) is an unflinching examination of desperation and self-deception in the emotional vacuum of modern consumer society.
'I think it A Work of genius, I think it The Work of a Genius' John Cheever
For many years, the great poet Von Humboldt Fleisher and Charlie Citrine, a young man inflamed with a love for literature, were the best of friends. At the time of his death, however, Humboldt is a failure, and Charlie's life has reached a low point: his career is at a standstill, and he's enmeshed in an acrimonious divorce, infatuated with a highly unsuitable young woman and involved with a neurotic mafioso. And then Humboldt acts from beyond the grave, bestowing upon Charlie an…
PI, Tammy Wayne, tracks serial killers for a living. With the help of her colleague Arlene she locates a killer known as The Pimp, who killed her sister Holly. The Pimp has Tammy under surveillance, coming and going to her house as he wants.
The Beekeeper, a killer that abducts women and coats them in latex before killing them, enters the story. Karen Sincere is married to dangerous and disturbed Micky Sincere. His obsession with bees convinces her Mickey is leading a double life as a killer. Then Karen meets the handsome Julius Gold in the exclusive Attic bar in Canary Wharf and starts an affair with him.
