Safe Return Doubtful

translated from the French by Louise Varèse

This is the first of three romans durs novels set in Connecticut, where Simenon settled after divorcing his first wife and marrying Denyse.
Rather than the sense of place being important, it is the time at which it is set, the late 1940s, early 1950s and the rise of McCarthyism and whisper campaigns.

Spencer Ashby is a teacher at the local private boarding school, though an incomer, having married the daughter of the headmaster. Belle, the 18 year old daughter of one of his wife’s old friends, is found strangled in her bedroom, and Ashby, who had been downstairs working at his lathe all night, is naturally suspected, but then cleared, as there is no evidence, or obvious motive.

Regardless of this public mood turns against him, he is questioned again, and released again, but is mentally beginning to wobble. He stops at a bar on his way home having avoided alcohol all of his life, and things begin to unravel..

Prior to this I hadn’t thought Simenon’s American period to be as strong as the rest of his career, but this is typically him, wonderfully dark and twisting. A deep psychological study of a man in crisis, and a thoroughly good story.

It is available with his other two Connecticut novels, The Bottom of the Bottle and The Brothers Rico in one volume, called either Tidal Wave or An American Omnibus. It was good value in those days.. (1967), though even better now, as it available digitally online for free at the internet archive.
It has been adapted for film twice, La Mort de Belle in 1961, and Jusqu’à l’Enfer in 2009. And even a third adaptation, due later this year in France, called simply Belle.

As an aside, on its publication in English in 1954, many of the citizens of Lakeville were displeased at how they and their town had been depicted in the novel. Some of residents even went as far as to let Simenon know of their displeasure, causing a rift between him and his neighbours.

My GoodReads score 5 / 5