Author(s): Georges Simenon

Crime Thriller Mystery

Kees Popinga is the most average of men, a solid citizen of the good city of Groningen where decent people divert themselves with a game of chess at the non-alcoholic bar. But one night this middle manager, model husband, and devoted father of two finds out that his boss is bankrupt and that his own carefully tended life is in ruins. Before he had always watched impassively as the trains to the world at large swept by; now he catches the first one out of town. Not long after that, he commits his first murder. How different are the cautious routines of ordinary life from the compulsions of a killer? How reliable is even the most reliable man's identity? What finally is the truth about a person? These are some of the questions dramatized in 'The Man Who Watched Trains Go By', the modern master of the psychological novel.