Un giallo organizzato come una bomba a orologeria, uno svolgimento prevedibile ma architettato perfettamente, una scrittura asciutta e funzionale, una capacità di leggere le passioni umane (non senza una vena erotica efficace) con pochi rivali. Non a caso ne è stato anche tratto un film. ( )

Exceptionally slow moving Roman Durs, but sure enough came through in the end. Emigre Falcone has an affair with Andree, a statuesque beauty from his youth. We begin in passion, with a bite and an offhand conversation, musing about being together always (though they are both married). This is so... realistic. Falcone mildly recognizes that this affair may be entering into dangerous territory (Andree taking it too seriously), but lets it go and hopes for the best. Mistake! Andree begins the series of events bringing us to her husbands "accidental" death. Falcone suspects and begins to quickly try to back out of this, but... too late. She sends him messages/mail- you're next ... (as in he should now free himself from his wife so they can be together), but still he hides and makes vague plans to leave the area to escape the still impassioned lover. Instead Falcone's wife is killed by some poisoned jam (prepared by Andree, the clerk in the grocery). Of course they are both arrested and convicted as a joint crime of passion ... Andree throughout making love eyes to Falcone, while he shudders and dissolves in ennui. All of this is laid out s-l-o-w-l-y in talks (interrogations) with the police inspector / shrink. Masterfully unfolded. The greatness lies in Falcone's constant agonizing over how little anyone can understand another .. he is mostly referring to the careless affair he was having and the meaningless words he spoke that later become - The Proof! the All revealing plan! isn't that so real? so common.... not that he was merely selfishly using Andree- he was careless and selfish for sure, but the way things spin out of control from what seems a relatively minor transgression. Andree is certainly not sympathetic (as she is the calculating killer) and yet ... and yet.... she is beautiful in her unhinged way. Not forgiving, but seeing the quiet, non violent passion... there since childhood, though she acted cold ... this is an outstanding depiction. ( )

This harrowing story of an affair gone wrong, and the aftermath, is teased out through a series of interrogations of one half, Tony Falcone, and his flashbacks and recollections. The suspense builds masterfully and the exact crime involved is not revealed until late in the book. “How different life is when one is living it from when one picks through it later on!” he observes at one point.

“There was something threatening and unreal about having to speak so precisely about things rooted in a tragedy that was never mentioned,” Tony muses at one point during his extended questioning before a magistrate. And that’s what fills the story with uncertainty – we know something terrible happened but not exactly what or who is going to pay. ( )

Masterful Thriller of Erotic Obsession
Review of the Penguin Modern Classics paperback edition (2015) of a new translation* by Linda Coverdale of the French language original "La chambre bleue" (1964)

[4.5]
The Blue Room is a craftily constructed erotic thriller which builds up tension throughout with its disorienting temporal leaps which make you question whether you are in a flashback or flashforward time-space. Initially, we meet a smug and self-satisfied Tony and his lover Andrée in the space of their love nest, a blue-painted room at Tony's brother's hotel. Andrée starts to speak of a future together where they have left their spouses. Suddenly Tony sees Andrée's husband Nicolas approaching the hotel and he quickly makes his escape while dreading a possible confrontation. Afterwards he decides to drop the long running affair, but finds there is no escape as he is unwillingly drawn into Andrée's desperate and extreme plans for their future.

Gradually you realize that these scenes are a flashback and that Tony is in fact being currently interviewed by the authorities and that some crime must have taken place to initiate that. But you don't yet know what that crime was and what was the fate of all of the characters except for Tony. The tension continues to build throughout as the pieces gradually fall into place and the continuous flashbacks and flashforwards give you the clues as to the start of the affair and then of its devastating results.

This was top-flight Georges Simenon and is surely one of his best.

See image at https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1591623773...
Cover of the first French language edition published by Presses de la Cité in 1964. Image sourced from Goodreads

After reading the first dozen Simenon Maigret novels this year, I'm now reading a half-dozen or so of the non-Maigrets. Many of the non-Maigret books are being translated into English for the first time and there are still probably quite a few yet to be done.

The Blue Room is the 4th of my readings of Georges Simenon's romans durs** (French: hard novels) which was his personal category for his non-Chief Inspector Maigret fiction. This is like Graham Greene, who divided his work into his "entertainments" and his actual "novels." Similar to Greene, the borders between the two areas are quite flexible as we are often still dealing with crime and the issues of morals and ethics. Simenon's romans durs are definitely in the noir category though, as compared to the sometimes lighter Maigrets where the often cantankerous Chief Inspector provides a solution and the guilty are brought to justice.

Trivia and Links
* La chambre bleue was previously translated into English by Eileen Ellenbogen and was also published as The Blue Room in 1968 and in several reprint editions afterwards.

** There is a limited selection of 100 books in the Goodreads' Listopia of Simenon's romans durs which you can see here. Other sources say there are at least 117 of them, such as listed at Art and Popular Culture.

The Blue Room has been adapted twice for film.
The first adaptation was as the Spanish language film (set in Mexico) La habitación azul in 2002 by director Walter Doehner. A Spanish language trailer without subtitles can be viewed on YouTube here.

The second adaptation was as the French language film La chambre bleue in 2014 by director Mathieu Amalric who also stars in the role of Tony. An English subtitled trailer can be viewed on YouTube here. ( )

Tony is in prison, regularly interrogated by the judge about every little detail of his life, especially his brief, intermittent affair with Andree. Some heinous crime has been committed, but we don't know exactly what until near the end of the novel. What we do know is that there was intense passion, but not love, not in the way Tony finds in his quiet loyal wife, at least. Tony was an outsider, from Italian heritage in a small provisional French village. Does this make his case worse by default?

In this small novel, with a clean, sparse style, so much is communicated by so little. Characters are captured with intense realism and depth with the smattering of vital little details. The intrigue and voyeurism of the plot keeps us heavily engaged, even at times gripped, by the words on the page.

The message in the novel is that we rarely understand ourselves or our own motives, that concepts like love are artificial constructs, that we may try to be reflective, to understand ourselves with great depth, but at the end of the day we are at the whims of our unconscious desires, and have little clue why we do the things we do, and even who we are. This is a powerful message, wrought even more strongly by potential life-and-death consequences in this case.

I have the odd niggling problem with the work, though. The plot twists are a little far fetched at times (SEMI SPOILER: why doesn't anyone who assumes Tony is guilty question why a guilty man would so readily return to the scene of the crime just after that crime has been committed?). And the striking last line uttered by Andree is perhaps a little too on the sensationalist delusional side.

Leaving these tiny criticisms aside, though, this is a fascinating novel, which captures so much richness of character in so few pages that it was an utter treat to read over the course of a weekend. ( )