"Tropic Moon", the middle story in this omnibus, is the best of the three but all of them are well worth reading if you want to get a taste of French & Belgian colonialism. ( )

The first entry in this Simenon trio, i.e. Talatala, is a love triangle set in the Belgian Congo. It's a showcase of Simenon's incomparable ability to draw characters who manage to be compelling types without deteriorating into stereotype. Here, the slightly oddball French colonial farmer, the eponymous Talatala; his crash-landed, glamorous English lover; and his long-distance fiancee are all models of well-drawn plausibility. What this effort lacks is narrative drive -- why do things resolve the way they do, really? Talatala is also worthwhile reading for its insights into expatriate life; certain problems and mindsets common to expatriates (I am one myself) are well-depicted throughout.

Tropic Moon, the middle and most substantial work in this trio, is the story of Timar, an expatriate Frenchman in the Gabon who goes dangerously crazy for love of another expat, Adele, an enigmatic femme fatale. Adele has been accused of murder, but Timar runs off with her anyway, becoming embroiled in a scheme she's cooked up to take over a timber concession. Simenon's narrative skill here is remarkable: you are never quite sure if Timar is being set up, who's pulling whose strings, and who really cares for whom. Tropic Moon is a masterpiece of ambiguity and anomie.

Aboard the Aquitaine, the final constituent in this trio of African novels, is really no more than a novella, and its setting -- entirely confined to the voyage of a steamer making its way back to France from various colonial ports of call along Africa's west coast -- suggests Simenon wrote the whole thing in the space of a single similar voyage of his own. Yet there is remarkable depth here: nothing much happens on the voyage, but this tale of a ship's doctor who can't help caring deeply about his transient patients manages to root about in more dark nooks and crannies of human nature than many works ten times its length. ( )

Georges Simenon, the Belgian-born citizen of the world, is best remembered as the prolific author of the Inspector Maigret series of detective stories. It would be a huge error to deduce, therefore, that his gifts were limited to that genre. In an interview with The Paris Review, Simenon once revealed the very different approach he used when writing a "non-commercial", i.e. non-Maigret, novel. In essence, like a Method actor, he devoted up to two weeks of semi-isolation inhabiting the persona of a central character as he wrote. The experience was so total, that he had a physician monitor his health before and after the undertaking.

The success of this approach shows in African Trio, a collection of novellas, that compare favorably with the work of Joseph Conrad in demonstrating the desuetude of European customs and mores under the oppressive influences of colonial isolation and subtropic climate.

Tropic Moon is the gem of the set. The young protagonist arrives at a post he secured through a relative's influence. The heat, the boredom, a romance, a different set of social standards, and an unexpected dilemma commence to slowly derange him. The morph of his "voice" is seamless, convincing and masterful.

In Tatatala, by contrast, the protagonist is a returning colonialist who is so acclimated to his adopted home that his life is very nearly destroyed by a happenstance romance with a stranger stranded by an airplane failure - she being a very "civilized," vampish member of the English gentry.

Aboard the Aquataine concludes, and balances, the trilogy. A veteran ship's doctor, aboard a ship shuttling between France and the Congo, represents someone at home in both worlds. He warily circles a family - victims of tropic fatigue, like a wrestler looking for a safe hold, and cautiously observes a ship that is a potential waiting room of clientele. The ship is compromised by hull damage, and lists throughout the novella, a fitting metaphor for the colonialism of the times. ( )