A new translation of a twisting detective novel from the celebrated author of the Maigret series Hector Loursat, a lawyer in the small town of Moulins, has lived as a drunken recluse since his wife left him eighteen years previously. Unmoored from society and estranged from his daughter, he shuts himself away, numbed by endless bottles of burgundy. But when a dead man is found in his house one night, the resulting police investigation unearths secrets that shake the town - and Loursat´s isolation - to the core. No longer able to ignore the world, he emerges to take on the murder case himself and confront the lives of Moulins´ by-ways and back streets. In the progressive break-down of Loursat´s self-imposed isolation, Simenon brilliantly depicts the psychology of loneliness and a man´s tortured re-engagement with humanity and its darkest acts.