In Case of Emergency (Romans Durs)

A successful lawyer’s affair with a younger woman soon becomes something much darker: an all-consuming obsession that drives him to recklessly upend his own life—and to jealously control hers.

Lucien Gobillot has a successful career, a powerful wife, and a beautiful young mistress. Rather than feeling fulfilled, however, he finds himself overwhelmed with jealousy and anxiety, at all times paranoid and full of self-doubt. When his relationship with his mistress reaches a point of crisis, Gobillot acts rashly and indulges in his desires past the point of no return. As his obsession deepens, he struggles to make sense of his own actions—or to see any way out. In Case of Emergency is an engrossing, disturbing portrait of a man overcome with—and repelled by—his own desires, meticulously captured by Georges Simenon’s distinctive eye for human psychology and the dark undersides of our most intimate relationships.