GIRL IN HIS PAST

A precision-tooled psychopathic case starts with Albert Bauche's confession of murder, as, fleeing from Paris, he gives himself up to the local gendarmerie of the Forest, of Orleans when his car breaks down. Maintaining his honesty, re-enacting his crime of shooting, then bludgeoning to death, Russian Serge Nicholas, admitting his humiliating position as front for Nicholas' disreputable moving picture company, Bauche feels free to talk when he is given over to psychiatric examination. There his life in sunshine, at home, where his resentments are taken out on spying on the local where; the black life that follows when Fernande's nymphomania arouses his interest, understanding and perverted desire; and the neon life that Nicholas gives him, aware all the time that Fernande is Nicholas' -- and others' mistress -- are laid bare so that his final commitment leaves him free to think that he is not mad. The emphasis on the importance of sexual behavior and its revelations keep this out of the regular Simenon crime-sales, limit it library-wise and make it of interest to non-practicing psychologists.