The Man Who Watched Trains Go By

Georges Simenon's novel, an effort to move beyond Maigret toward more "serious" work, nonetheless contains themes found in his crime novels. The story, in fact, has all the hallmarks of a Maigret story and features Lucas, Maigret's deputy, in a cameo as chief detective. The story, of a man chucking everything and running away from a respectable life, has been told before, but Simenon makes it particularly chilling and believable. 

The Plot Against America

It is unwise to draw too many parallels, especially given that this Philip Roth novel is speculative historical fiction, but The Plot Against America achieves a sobering relevance in the United States of 2017. The prose, firstly, is impeccable; the plot, believable; and the warning, a source of sickening dread. There is nothing that ensures that democracies will endure. Indeed they can't in the face of an ignorant or bigoted citizenry, not for long anyway.

The Whistler

It takes John Grisham 100 pages to get this leaden tale off the ground, after which the reader has only to endure another 250 pages of his awful prose.

Les Enfants Terribles

The strangeness of Jean Cocteau's novel derives from its honesty and perceptiveness about human behavior. That strangeness, therefore, becomes a commentary on the pettiness and parochialism of other novels, against which this one shines.