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Set in a fictional occupied country (clearly Vichy France), Dirty Snow is one of the bleakest books I have read so far this year with a character, Frank Friedmaier, who is at times a representative & at others an exaggeration of the morally bankrupt landscape surrounding him. As Volllmann writes in the afterword, “Simenon has concentrated noir into a darkness as solid and heavy as the interior of a dwarf star.“
Book 5 of #MidwayBOTY23

In an unnamed occupied city, the spoiled Frank has just killed an officer. This happens in the first few pages, so this isn't a spoiler. As for why he did so, the motive behind Frank's actions lies behind most of this book. This is the second Simenon that I have read and he had a real talent for evoking the bleak and sordid atmosphere that his characters move through. In both books he has been largely interested in the power dynamics of society 👇

#readingeurope2020 My 1st trip in this challenge was a quick hop across the channel to read for the 1st time a classic crime author Georges Simenon, not a maigret but a dark picture of a yng man in occupied France. Like raskolnikov, frank friedmaeir is a yng man living in his mother's brothel who commits crimes which eventually he cannot forgive himself for and his subsequent arrest and interview reads like a chess match. On to maigret i think.

The story was there, I know it was, but I just couldn't get into it. I might try it again when I don't have other books i'd prefer to read in my cue, or I go through a dark, cold, Russianesque time.

I‘ve been on a Georges Simenon kick ever since I read Dirty Snow last month. Not sure how I never heard of him considering all the books he's written (@ 400?!) plus his celebrity writer status while he was alive. I haven't read any of his Maigret series yet, but I'm getting into his Romans Dur's. Six read and seemingly endless to go.

#chillyreads