L’horloger d’Everton - Georges Simenon

Set in smalltown USA and written while Simenon was living there, L'horloger d'Everton nevertheless has all the familiar characteristics of Simenon's unique approach to the crime novel.  The central crime incident takes place "off-screen", when Ben, the 16 year-old son of watch repair man Dave Galloway disappears with a car, a gun and the 15 year-old daughter of his neighbour and soon becomes a fugitive from the law. Simenon's focus however is on the factors underlying Ben's out of character behaviour, examining the background of Dave Galloway family background, his own broken marriage and his relationship with his son, and as well as the monotony and watchfulness of the small community in which they live and their own peculiar form of rebellion against social and bourgeois expectations.

If it doesn't reveal anything significant or different from other Simenon novels with a similar subject matter, the novel's American setting brings in another in a further aspect outside the usual Simenon case - that of the nature of press reporting and the whole circus of the US judicial system.

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