The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By (novel)

The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By, first published in English in 1938, is a crime thriller by Georges Simenon about a man’s rapid descent into criminality and madness following sudden financial ruination. A film adaptation was released in 1952.

A quiet, respectable Dutch clerk from Groningen becomes increasingly unhinged after discovering that his life savings have been looted by his employer. After taking his revenge on his boss, the man hurriedly leaves town, eventually making his way to Paris. When he discovers that he is being trailed by a Dutch police detective the man becomes more and more delusional, seeing himself as a master criminal and certain that the woman he has become involved with, his former employer’s mistress, is genuinely interested in him, rather than the bag of stolen money he has carried with him from the Netherlands.

The book was adapted for the film The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (1952) starring Claude Rains and Marius Goring and directed by Harold French.