Simenon Is Serious

THE SHADOW FALLS--Georges Simenon --Harcourt, Brace ($2.50).

Every week, the good citizens of La Rochelle saw the respected Donadieu family march in stately procession to Holy Mass, led by Grand Old Man Oscar Donadieu, La Rochelle's eminent shipping magnate. Every week, old Donadieu's youngest daughter, Martine, stealthily opened her bedroom window and admitted her handsome lover, Philippe, La Rochelle's most unscrupulous Casanova.

When father Donadieu began to suspect his daughter's romance, he roared: "If that young ruffian has the nerve to set foot in this house . .I'll throw him out head foremost." Soon after, old Donadieu's water-logged corpse was found under a pier. The villagers wondered: did he fall or was he pushed? Old man Donadieu is merely the first ill-fated character in Author Simenon's latest book -- which traces the decline and fall of the bereft Donadieu family through 371 hard-breathing pages. By the time Author Simenon dusts his hands of them, the Donadieus have been involved in three murders, one rape, one abortion, one suicide, and a smattering of cancer, homosexuality, tuberculosis and insanity -- quite apart from a daily round of business chicanery, bribery and perjury. The moral seems to be that there's so much bad in the best of us. ... Readers may feel that there is almost too much.

Belgian-born, 42-year-old Georges Simenon (real name: Georges Sim) is one of the world's most prolific authors. Before turning to "serious" fiction (of which The Shadow Falls is supposedly an example) he wrote 300-odd pulp novels and thrillers, including the stories which made his Inspector Maigret one of fiction's most famed detectives. But last spring the gumshoe was on the other foot. Sleuthhound Simenon was snapped up by Paris police and indicted. The charge: "intelligence with the enemy" during the German occupation.

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