Three Bedrooms in Manhattan

Three Bedrooms in Manhattan is a love story with a happy ending — two rarities for Georges Simenon’s romans durs — and also a partly autobiographical account of Simenon’s own love affair with his second wife. “The place smelled of fairgrounds, of lazy crowds, of nights when you stayed out because you couldn’t go to bed, and it smelled like New York, of its calm and brutal indifference.”