The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By

Georges Simenon wrote over 400 novels, and The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By was the eleventh (!) he published in 1938 alone, but don't dismiss it as a throwaway. It has a simple premise—Kees Popinga, a thoroughly bourgeois Dutch shipping manager, decides to rip off every button of his buttoned-up life—and the consequences may seem inevitable, but they remain fascinating all the same. Even if you didn't know how fast Simenon wrote his books, you might still detect it: there's an appealing velocity to his story for the reader too, even if poor Kees himself doesn't end up traveling as fast or as freely as he had hoped. —Tom Old Book of the Week