Georges Simenon’s 1965 The Accomplices might be the hardest of the author’s “hard” novels (romans durs). And for good reason. If the famous writer from Liège, Belgium wanted to make it hard on both his main character and the reader, he succeeded in spades with this one. Of all the cruel twists of fate hurled at a protagonist, this book starts off with the cruelest.

The opening lines: “It was brutal, instantaneous. And yet he was neither surprised nor resentful, as if he had always been expecting it. He realized in a flash, as soon as the horn started screaming behind him, that the catastrophe was inevitable and that it was his fault.”

Joseph Lambert, age forty-seven, a wealthy co-owner of a dairy and constructin business, has a momentary lapse of attention driving his Citroën down a hill on a highway outside a town near Paris, causing a school bus to crash, killing the driver and dozens of children returning from their day camp.

Simenon doesn’t stop there. He makes Joseph Lambert a despicable, nasty, condescending, self-absorbed lout. For example, the reason for Lambert’s momentary distraction that resulted in the death of all those children - his hand was pressed between his secretary’s thighs in the passenger seat, bringing her to orgasm.

And does Joseph Lambert drive back to see if he can offer any help when the school bus crashes into a wall? Does Joseph Lambert think of calling the police or hospital? Of course not. His only thought is to drive away without being detected.

While the entire French town and region reel from the catastrophe of such a devastating highway accident and immediately comes together as a community to mourn the loss, for Joseph Lambert, the important question remains: did anybody see him driving his Citroën down the hill in the middle of the road, the ultimate trigger for the mass tragedy? Also, there is Edmonde Pampin who was in the car with him. Will she remain silent or will she go to the police?

Thus the framework for Simenon’s stark existential tale – Joseph Lambert, transformed in an instant into a man standing alone, isolated with his guilt and fear, face to face with questions of meaning and absurdity, questions of life and death.

Herein lies the wisdom nectar for readers willing to keep turning the pages so as to follow Monsieur Lambert over the course of the next several days: each memory, each reflection, each encounter and interaction with wife Nicole, his housekeeper, business associates, card playing buddies, prostitute, extended family, police, brother Marcel who runs the company with him and, of course, Edmonde, reveals a distinctive facet and warped surface of the human psyche.

Ah, the existential moment, Simenon's forte. Lambert later that same day: "As he walked by, he heard, in the characteristic tone of radio announcers, "The police have good reason to think that they will shortly identify . . . " He did not stop to hear the rest of it. His first reaction was "So much the better!" In that way, they would get it over with immediately. He wouldn't defend himself. He had made up his mind not to provide them with any explanation."

Following the calamity, each and every time Lambert brushes against or meets up with Marcel - in the office, out in the yard, at a family get-together - his anger and resentment swells and surges, forcefully bringing to the surface his true feelings toward his younger brother, the one in the family with all the mechanical skill and technical knowledge - he hates Marcel with all his heart.

"While eating his soft-boiled eggs, he watched his wife, but it would have been hard to tell what was going on in his mind. He had a grim, fixed expression, as when he was in a bar and felt there was going to be a fight or when he was about to start one." Likewise, with Nicole - he hates her and everything in their apartment - the furniture, the too clean walls, self-righteous housekeeper Angèle.

Why all the hatred? One clear reason is provided when Lambert recalls a defining moment in his life - it happened back when he was a boy of nine. Having taken two pills the dentist game him, sitting out in the backyard, looking up at the branches of a linden tree, beholding the play of shadow and light, hearing all nature sounds transformed into a clanging of bells, he was transported into a wholly different realm where all his senses came alive and he felt part of a great symphony. Even as a lad, he comprehended instinctively, compared with this intense, uplifting, magical experience, conventional, everyday reality counted as nothing.

In this way, we are given the key to his obsession with Mademoiselle Pampin. Edmonde was able to click into this ethereal plane at will, at any time. And when he was with her he could join her. "The universe hen drifted away until it was only a kind of unimportant nebula. Objects lost their weight, human beings were merely tiny or grotesque puppets, and everything to which one usually attached value became ridiculous." Joseph Lambert concludes wryly he and Edmonde Pampin are accomplices.

Meanwhile, as if an ever tightening noose, the everyday presses in on Monsieur Lambert. There is the tall, thin rustic tending his goats along the road who in all likelihood recognized him driving his Citroën down the highway at that fateful hour; there is the direct question from Marcel, asking if he is the man the police are hunting; and, on top of everything else, as if the ongoing police investigation isn't enough, the insurance company has sent their high and mighty special agent Chevalier, an arrogant thirty-year old genius, to conduct his own independent analysis, a man with a reputation for unearthing the truth no matter how scant the evidence.

I can appreciate how many readers dislike The Accomplices. However, for those who take pleasure in a tight, finely drawn psychological study, this Simenon is not to be missed.


Photo of the artist as a seasoned novelist, Georges Simenon, 1903-1989

"He would have like to go in, to order anything, to join in their conversation, or merely to listen, for he suddenly felt a desire for human contact, any human contact. He knew what would happen if he let himself go. He would order to steady his nerves, and, instead, the liquor would excite him and make him talkative. He might be overcome by an irresistible need to confess." - Georges Simenon, The Accomplices