Youll get used to things youll see But you have to watch very carefully what you say and what you doAdil Bey is an outsider Newly arrived as Turkish consul at a rundown Soviet port on the Black Sea he receives only suspicion and hostility from the locals His one intimacy is a growing wary relationship with his Russian secretary Sonia who he watches silently in her room opposite his apartment But this is Stalins world before the war and nothing is as it seems Georges Simenons most starkly political work The People Opposite is a tour de force of slowburn tensionIrresistible read him at your peril avoid him at your loss Sunday Times