The Strangers in the House

A new translation of a twisting detective novel from the celebrated author of the Maigret series.

The Strangers in the House follows Hector Loursat, a lawyer in the small town of Moulins, who has lived as a drunken recluse since his wife left him eighteen years ago. Unmoored from society and estranged from his daughter, he shuts himself away, numbed by endless bottles of burgundy.

But when a dead man is found in his house one night, the resulting police investigation unearths secrets that shake the town—and Loursat's isolation—to the core. No longer able to ignore the world, he emerges to take on the murder case himself and confront the lives of Moulins' by-ways and back streets.

In the progressive break-down of Loursat's self-imposed isolation, Simenon brilliantly depicts the psychology of loneliness and a man's tortured re-engagement with humanity and its darkest acts.