Delving into the normality of evil

That One Book is a fortnightly column that does exactly what it says — it takes up one great classic and tells you why it is (still) great.

Saudha Kasim

Delving into the normality of evil

In The Hatter’s Ghosts, one of Georges Simenon’s many novels that don’t feature his great literary creation Inspector Maigret, the weather sets the tone pretty early on about what sort of story this is. It’s been “raining for 20 days in La Rochelle” and there’s been a spate of killings of old women. The town’s residents are frightened there’s a serial killer on the loose and there’s a slow-building panic that the killer isn’t done yet.

Quite by accident, Kachoudas the tailor, has discovered who the killer is (it’s his neighbour and the man whose occupation gives the novel its title). The hatter, Labbé, finds out early enough in the story that Kachoudas has discovered his horrifying secret and a cat-and-mouse game begins. In stuffy cafés, out on wet and gloomy streets, and in their rundown neighbourhoods, these two men spy on each other and Labbé tries to evade the tailor to complete the mission he has set for himself.

It’s always the first instinct, when reading news reports about serial murderers, to wonder what sort of evil animates such people. Georges Simenon, John Lanchester wrote in a piece for the London Review of Books some years ago, held the belief that “people are not inherently bad — indeed, are not inherently anything, other than human.” In that same article, Lanchester writes of meeting Simenon’s son John who said that his “father didn’t believe in evil.” In allowing us such close, almost claustrophobic access to Labbé and his crimes, Simenon is showing us just how easy it is for the most normal-seeming human beings to slip into lawlessness. It’s not an otherworldly evil force that makes us do it, but our own choices supported by our twisted reasoning.

Reading The Hatter’s Ghosts is a visceral experience. Simenon conjures up the clamminess of the weather, the febrile imaginings of its anti-hero whose point-of-view we are constantly seeing this world through, the smells and stinks of shophouses with poor ventilation, and dark coal-filled cellars. All of these are described in language so precise and evocative that you can’t help but feel you’re in the grimy, noir-ish environment of La Rochelle a few days before Christmas and yet you can’t look away or stop reading.

Life isn’t much fun, one of the characters in The Hatter’s Ghosts says. Why should it be, another replies. This exchange underscores what sets Simenon apart from his contemporaneous crime writers. In his worldview he’s hewing closer to the great French writers like Camus — Simenon’s works aren’t like those of Agatha Christie where the detective exposes the murderer with a flourish and you can go back to viewing the world with the smug conviction that there’s an order to things and the civilised world won’t let such aberrations as killing go unpunished.

As The Hatter’s Ghosts unfolds, you perceive the reasons why these crimes have been committed even as you get a fuller and deeper understanding of the killer. You understand the small orbit of his life in this town that most people leave. You understand what years of oppression and the chipping away of a psyche do to a man. And before you know it, when the denouement occurs, you have to face the fact that you aren’t in the company of a monster, but an ordinary man who’s convinced himself that “killing is a necessity”. It’s in that moment of unmasking that Simenon’s strength as a writer is revealed — his unique ability to illustrate the grey morass of the human soul elevates him above the rest of the crime writer pantheon.

SAUDHA KASIM

The author is a writer and communications professional. When she’s not reading, writing or watching cat videos, she can be found on Instagram @saudha_k where she posts about reading, writing, and cats.