The Hitchhiker is a masterful thriller, a weekend journey that will change a couple's lives forever. Originally titled Feux Rouges (Red Lights), this is one of George Simenon's novels not featuring his famous Detective Maigret. This packs more story into its 128 pages than many other novels - well balanced, nuanced, multi-faceted. Recommended.
"His expression for it was 'going into the tunnel', which he never used in talking to someone else, least of all to his wife. He knew exactly what it meant and tried to determine the precise moment when he entered it, but never with success."
It starts with a martini after work with his wife, the same time and Madison Avenue bar every day. This weekend they are driving up to Maine to pick the kids up from summer camp, the same as every other couple in Manhattan. The traffic would be horrendous, the news predicting the amount of accidents on the road. His personal goal is to watch for the roadside bars, he tells her for the washroom, but really for another shot of rye. Each bar filled with silent, lonely strangers, each with a TV broadcasting the latest news of a prison break. After five or six stops, their arguments increase. The underlying tension is the emasculation he feels, as she has the better job, making more money, and he is left raising the children. She states on the final stop if he goes in for one more drink she won't be there when he comes out. He takes the keys inside. Several shots later, he exits to find she has left him, nowhere to be found. Perhaps she walked to a nearby bus? It's already late into the night. And inside his car, a strange man in her place, armed. He instinctively knows this is the escaped convict, but wanting to prove his own manliness, he offers a ride, and tries to befriend the man. Evading police traps, he is eventually left in a broken car - too drunk to notice where he is. When he finds help in the morning, he inquires about the Greyhound bus. She was not on it - in fact, she is nowhere to be found.
The nightmare is just beginning as the police intervene. A woman has been attacked on the side of the road - the attacker matching the description of the hitchhiker, and the woman matching the description of his wife.
They have travelled far from their comfortable home in Long Island, in a strange State without identification or money. You can feel his burning dissatisfaction in the marriage as they travelled the highway north, his resentment at the way she controls thier lives. The excitement of an adventure with an escapee fuels his male fantasies of rugged individualism, on the road with no ties. No mention is made about him continually drinking into a stupor - it's like his normal routine. He had already entered the tunnel of intoxication early in the night - and with the wife gone it was going to be a night for his own adventures, never mind if they leave him blacked out by the side of the road. The last third of this thriller is the most harrowing. Her unknown journey is painful, and not something easily overcome. Their lives will be different now in many ways. Without going into detail, Simenon portrays the many ways the couple is now broken.
Terrific writing, and an impressive feat to pack the entirety of this story into such few pages.
The Hitchhiker (Feux Rouges) was made into French film in 2004.
This reminded me of a 1997 film Breakdown, starring Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlan, an intense thriller in which a couple break down by the side of the road, and a passing trucker offers to take the wife to get help. She disappears and he has a nightmare finding her. If you think it is nasty and too easily a reality, it is.
My other review for George Simenon:
Pietr the Latvian (Maigret #1)
1955 / Paperback / 128 pages
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