The Strangers in the House

Dirty, drunk, unloved, and unloving, Hector Loursat has lived as a near recluse since his wife abandoned him and their infant daughter eighteen years before. Though a member of a prominent local family and at one time a successful lawyer, Loursat now shuns and is shunned by polite society–which suits him fine. He prefers to spend his evenings leafing through the books in his library and drinking Bordeaux. Loursat does his best to ignore the presence of his teenage daughter, paying little attention to the questionable activities that seem to be going on in his vast, old, ever-more dilapidated house. But then, one night, the sound of a gunshot penetrates the padded walls of Loursat’s study. He leaves the security of his wing of the house to investigate. What he stumbles on is a case of murder. Loursat begins to discover something of the secret life of his daughter and her circle of friends, young people from all levels of local society. He finds himself strangely drawn to this group, and when one of them is accused of the murder, he astonishes all by taking up the young man’s defense. Reluctantly Loursat finds himself drawn back into the thick of life. InThe Strangers in the House, Georges Simenon, master chronicler of the dark side of the human heart, gives us a detective story that is also a tale of an improbable redemption.