A Man Who Knows — Emmanuel Bove

Maurice Lesca is fifty-seven--older, not much wiser, and painfully comical in his failures. Though educated as a doctor, he's a ne'er-do-well who milks family and friends for money and lives in poverty with his widowed sister. When he encourages a divorcée to extort money from her ex-husband, Lesca sows the seeds of distrust that will disrupt his world. But Lesca is a survivor; he will always survive in the modern city. The last of Bove's major novels, A Man Who Knows is the most mature example of his celebrated style.