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Two startlingly similar short novels appeared in France in 1942, at the centre of each a conscienceless and slightly creepy young man, unattached and adrift, the perpetrator of a meaningless murder. One was Albert Camus���Ĵ�ý�s L���Ĵ�ý�Étranger, the other La Veuve Couderc. Camus���Ĵ�ý�s novel rose to become part of the literary firmament, and is still glittering, intensely studied and praised ���Ĵ�ý� to my mind, overpraised. Simenon���Ĵ�ý�s novel did not drop, but settled, so to speak, went the way of the rest of his work ���Ĵ�ý� rattled along with decent sales, the occasional reprint, and was even resurrected as a 1950s pulp fiction paperback with a come-on tag line (���Ĵ�ý�A surging novel of torment and desire���Ĵ�ý�) and a lurid cover: busty peasant girl pouting in a barn, her skirt hiked over her knees, while a hunky guy lurks at the door ���Ĵ�ý� price twenty-five cents.