Noir Novel Review: Dirty Snow (1948) by Georges Simenon

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If you know the name Georges Simenon, chances are it's from the Inspector Maigret stories. Simenon wrote 76 Maigret novels and 28 short stories between 1931 and 1972 (Wikipedia). His detective stories made him one of the highest earning authors in the world in the mid 20th century. (New Yorker). He generally took only 11 days to write a novel which made him astonishingly productive but this did not garner him praise from the literary community. He also wrote what he called straight novels. He had hoped that his straight novels would offset his detective stories (pot boilers in his words) and earn him the Nobel Prize for Literature (Times Literary Supplement) which he thought he deserved.

It is impossible to get a definitive count of the novels Simenon wrote because he also wrote under pseudonyms, perhaps as many as 25. Some sources put the number at around 500. Simenon himself estimated that he had written 349 novels by the time he was 34 in 1937  (TLS) so 500 isn't an unrealistic number. There is an amusing story related to his productivity:

In the 1930s, when a French publisher took out advertisements announcing that a writer called Kessel was publishing "his first novel for three years", the creator of Maigret responded with cheeky flyers boasting "the first Simenon for eight days". (The Guardian)

Simenon  referred to his serious, psychological,  straight novels as romans durs (strong,/tough,/hard novels). In the case of Dirty Snow, we can also add noir as a description.

If Dirty Snow is representative of Simenon's romans durs, then these "straight" novels are distinctly literary. This isn't surprising since, remember, Simenon thought he was certain for a Nobel Prize in Literature. We know we are reading a literary novel because, in a story about a criminal, when the authorities finally bring Frank in, they seem largely indifferent to the crimes he committed. Instead, Simenon approaches Dirty Snow as a psychological study, a dark, nihilistic, existential search for identity and the reason for being for "... a piece of shit". It is thoroughly noir though very different than the classic US noir I've been looking at. Remember what Otto Penzler said about noir: Like art, love, and pornography, noir is hard to define, but you know it when you see it and I had no hesitation seeing it as noir.

Depending on how much of a reading purist you are, there may be spoilers ahead. Not for me but your mileage may vary.

The story is set during icy winter in an unnamed country occupied by an unnamed enemy. Our assumption is that it is France occupied by the Germans in WWII but the reader might be confused because the civilian names sound German but a named street is French (Rue Verte). 

Frank Friedmaier is 19 years old and the son of the owner/madam of a whorehouse. There is no father in the picture. He is privileged and doesn't want for good food, good clothing, warmth in the winter, and money. Lotte hires young women from the country only to discard them when they lose their "freshness".

Frank hangs around Timo's bar which is frequented by a gangster and black marketeer named Kromer whose approval he seems to seek, at first. Frank decides that it is time to make his first kill; everyone in Timo's has killed at least once. Perhaps it is the way he was raised, the kind of person his mother is, the lack of a father but Franks is supremely indifferent about what he is planning to do. Here's how Simenon describes it. The paragraphs are not continuous in the book.

Losing his virginity, his actual virginity, hadn't meant very much to Frank. He had been in the right place...  

And for Frank, who was nineteen, to kill his first man was another loss of virginity hardly more disturbing than the first. And, like the first, it wasn't premeditated. It just happened.  As though a moment comes when it is both necessary and natural to make a decision that has long since been made.

No one had pushed him to do it. No one had laughed at him. ...

Not in a fight. That would have been against his nature. To have it count, it seemed to him, it wouls have to be done in cold blood. 

Frank's target is a fat, lecherous noncommissioned officer in the Occupying police nicknamed the Eunuch. He is not a significant target but more of a joke, not taken seriously. Frank borrows a knife from Kromer with the implication that he intends to use it. But when Frank returns the knife, he tells Kromer he didn't use it. The murder was something Frank did for himself and, once done, he didn't need to share it with anyone.

There is a bit of foreshadowing here. Frank is waiting for the Eunich to walk past the alley in which he is waiting when a neighbor walks past. It is Gerhardt Holst who lives across the hall from Frank with his sixteen year old daughter, Sissy. Frank impulsively coughs to attracts Holst's attention. Why does Frank want to provide a witness who can place him at the scene of the crime? What Simenon is establishing is that Frank is forcing his destiny along. Will taking the Eunich's service pistol bring him to the attention of the authorities? Will Holst turn him in for a reward? Given that this is a noir, you won't have difficulty figuring out Frank's destiny.

About half the book is Frank setting himself up for his fall with two notable events. He does something despicable to Sissy who believes she is in love with him. In a seeming contradiction, Frank actually cares about Sissy but his act further proves to himself that he is "... a piece of shit". He also commits another murder using the stolen gun with indifference equal to his first murder and makes his fall inevitable.

Timo the innkeeper tries to warn Frank that while he might be secure with one section of the occupying authority, another section could be watching him. But for Frank:

And why say he was worried when he was perfectly calm, when it was he, of his own free will and awareness, was doing everything to bring about his own destruction.

When Frank is finally taken in by the authorities, it is without surprise or struggle. In fact, it is only a single individual who comes for Frank and they walk and take a street car to get to the station. A desperate man could have escaped easily but not Frank.

In a kind of Kafka-esque setting, Frank isn't told the charges or questioned but put in a cell for eighteen days where he hears prisoners shot in the morning.

When the authorities do begin to brutally interrogate him, they are interested in the source of the roll of money he had on him. Frank perversely holds out, not out of loyalty but because he wants to be the one to say enough. Frank accepts his destiny and will meet it on his own terms.

This is not an easy book to discuss. It is one long existential crises for Frank. You could subtitle it Frank's Dark Night of the Soul. I could give pages of quotes about destiny, accepting destiny, and acknowledging the point where there is no turning back but if you have read this far you don't need any more examples.

I can't remember ever reading such an intensely psychological crime story that didn't really focus on the crimes but the effect on the mind of the criminal. Perhaps if I ever manage to read Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy or Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment have something to compare it to.

I liked it and recommend it.

I read the 2003 New York Review Books edition translated by Marc Romano and Louiawn Varese with an afterword by William T. Vollmann.

I didn't find any bloggers reviewing this book but I found these links helpful and interesting.

Crime Pays: The Dilemma of Georges Simenon by Joan Acocella. New Yorker: October 10, 2011.

Georges Simenon Returns by Julian Barnes. Times Literary Supplement, May 7, 2014.

Would You Believe It by Mark Lawson. The Guardian, Nov 23, 2002.