Les Fiançailles de Monsieur Hire
Inscribed and signed: “à Roger Lafon, en sympathique hommage, Simenon, 33.”
Another tragedy, an innocent man, and a dramatic outcome. A forerunner of Simenon’s later “romans durs,” Les Fiançailles de Monsieur Hire is one of the finest titles Simenon published with Fayard. It is the opening novel of the second series issued by Fayard, following the first series of 22 titles with photographic covers. The new series, titled “Nouvelle collection Georges Simenon,” adopted a different design: color illustrated dust jackets by Bécan, the pseudonym of Bernhard Kahn, a Swedish former Foreign Legionnaire and graduate of the Beaux-Arts. Bécan produced all nine jackets for this series — a more literary series, which explains the choice of a less sensational cover than before, since only two of the nine titles are Maigret novels. The other seven rely on an increasingly slender plot, in which Simenon replaces suspense with atmospheric tension and a refined arrangement of characters in crisis. These seven literary novels, published by Fayard between March and December 1933, mark the final stage before Simenon began his career at Gallimard the following year, with Le Locataire (1934).
The manuscript, long kept by Simenon, was sold at his own initiative at an auction held in aid of prisoners of war in 1943. It has never resurfaced since.
A good copy, with its rare dust jacket, complete, and with a presentation inscription.