Georges Simenon wrote over 400 novels, sold about 550 million copies of them, and, just ahead of Pope John Paul II, is one of the world's most-translated authors. When he retired in 1973 to dictate his memoirs (21 more volumes), he was among the best-selling authors of all time. With numbers like these, it would be easy to write off Simenon as a hack — but think again: André Gide spoke for many when he pronounced Simenon's existentialist masterpieces superior to those by Camus.

With recent acclaim from the likes of John Banville, Luc Sante, and Paul Theroux, there are plenty of reasons to get into Simenon, and his novel The Strangers in the House (first published in 1940) is a great place to start. Strangers is one of Simenon's romans durs (he only wrote 117 of these), books far more bleak than his popular, feel-good Inspector Maigret stories. Squat in Strangers' center sits Hector Loursat, an overweight, middle-aged lawyer with nothing but money and time. He's so wrapped in drunkenness and isolation that he can't be bothered to notice when his teenage daughter and her friends turn his mansion into a den of sin. When a gunshot finally cuts through his stupor, Loursat reluctantly decides to learn why adolescents are out murdering in the depths of his mansion.

Although the plot eventually delivers an impoverished youth framed for the murder, his idealistic plans to marry Loursat's daughter, and Loursat's courageous decision to defend him in court, Strangers is far from a heartwarming story. Rather, Simenon by turns pities and mocks his provincial characters, while offering a corrective to the oft-romanticized French countryside — the town is populated by parents absurdly wrapped up in banalities, children estranged from common morals, and one man whose quest for redemption is doomed to fall short.

Harsh as it is — and what else would you expect from an existentialist, graphomaniac crime writer? — Strangers is nonetheless a trove of lean descriptions and witty irony. By keeping his book firmly rooted in the noir, Simenon maintains both gravity and meaning while creating a stunning psychological portrait.

-Scott Esposito