At the beginning of Maigret and Monsieur Charles, the 75th novel in Georges Simenon’s detective series, the celebrated inspector lines up his pipes on his desk. he plays with them for a while, arranging them in funny ways, before selecting one that suits his mood. he has just made a decision about the future of his career. He “had no remorse, but still he felt a certain sadness.”
Simenon also began his day as a writer by lining up his pipes on his desk, and one can’t help but wonder if, as he wrote these lines, he, too, felt a certain sadness. It was February 1972 and, after four decades of writing up to half a dozen novels a year, Maigret and Monsieur Charles would be the last.
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Its publication by penguin books later this month also marks the culmination of a six-year commitment by the publisher to republish the series in its entirety, all in crisp new translations. This project has introduced a whole new audience to Simenon’s work and given long-time fans the opportunity to renew their relationship with Maigret’s world. When Simenon was asked how Maigret’s novels differed from his other books, his Romans durs, he described them as “sketches.” but are they more than that? Ninety years after the start of the series, is it still worth reading? yes, and yes.
Maigret’s decision at the beginning of the final novel is to turn down a promotion to head of the judicial police. He “needed to get out of his office, soak up the atmosphere and discover different worlds with each new investigation,” writes Simenon. “He needed the cafes and bars, where he often ended up waiting, drinking a beer or a Calvados.” because this is, above all, what Maigret does: wait. and he watches. because Maigret’s mission is not merely to clarify the crimes. the culprit’s apprehension is secondary to his desire to understand the motivations of his opponents. In Maigret’s Childhood Friend, he tells a suspect, “I’m not judging you. I’m trying to understand.” is a phrase that perfectly sums up the work of Maigret and Simenon.
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the character of maidret is introduced in pietr the latvian (1930). It’s a novel that bears some of the hallmarks of the hundreds of pulp novels Simenon had written in the years before (an excess of action and exclamation points), and this embryonic manifestation of Maigret is more of the alpha-male action hero than he is. in the later novels: “he was a big, bony man. iron muscles molded the sleeves of his jacket. he had a way of imposing himself just by standing there.” but even at the beginning, there was something more. Maigret has his favorite theory: “inside every malefactor and criminal lives a human being. what he waited and watched was the crack in the wall, the moment when the human being comes out from behind the opponent. ”
The eponymous pietr is an elusive figure who seemingly possesses several personalities. Maigret’s goal is not just to gather evidence of his guilt, but to break these identities: to come to understand the man. he does this through patience and observation. The climax of the novel is not the drawn-out chase and fight that precedes it, but rather comes when the two men share a bottle of liquor in the upstairs room of an inn and Pietr unburdens himself to his confessor.
In 1948, Simenon would provide a kind of second introduction to Maigret. Maigret’s first case predates Pietr the Latvian by about 20 years. Maigret is the 26-year-old secretary of Superintendent Le Bret of the Saint-Georges station in Paris. Simenon was by then at the height of his powers as a novelist, and the detective’s portrayal is now more nuanced. We find Maigret, the son of a loire valley ranger, intimidated by the butler of a wealthy Parisian family, not knowing how to act among the more experienced police officers. he is stubborn, in his belief that status should not place anyone above the law, but he is also torn by self-doubt and a sense of purposelessness: “was it really a man’s job to ride all day in a bistro, see a house where nothing happened? he wonders. He remembers his early ambition to be a doctor, then, more vaguely, to be a kind of sage whom people consult: “a fixer of destinies, because he knew how to live the life of all kinds of men, to get into the minds of all. ” This is the supreme virtue of simenon as a novelist, to dig under the surface of the behavior of his characters; to empathize.
the plot of maidet and monsieur charles is about the murder of a rich playboy lawyer, a man who, like pietr the latvian, leads a kind of double life. The prime suspect is his estranged alcoholic wife, Nathalie, a former nightclub hostess, but the question that irritates Maigret most is not his guilt or innocence, but how he can tolerate the “stifling ” of the. It’s a crime novel, yes, but more than that, it’s an investigation of how we become who we are and how we become entrenched in lives we may not want to lead.
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One does not read Maigret’s novels expecting a wild revelation or plot twists, but to inhabit the vividly realized world of Parisian streets, dive bars, bistros and high-class hotels. if the books are sketches, they are the sketches of an old master. But the common thread running through all the books is Maigret’s inquiries into the psychology of his opponents, and it is this unflinching humanity that makes Maigret’s books worth reading.
graeme macrae burnet’s second novel, his gore project, was shortlisted for the 2016 man booker award
playing the maiden…
rupert davies introduced jules amédée françois maidet, police detective and commissioner of the paris criminelle brigade, to the british public in a bbc series from 1960 to 1963. each of the 52 episodes opened with an atmospheric theme tune by ron grainer.
Michael Gambon took over the role of detective from Richard Harris, who played him in the film Maigret (1988). The laconic Maigret de Gambon made 12 appearances in 1992-93.
Rowan Atkinson played Maigret in 2016 in ITV’s Dramatic Feature Films set in 1950s Paris. Atkinson said he had been “a devourer of Maigret novels for years” and was finally playing someone closer to himself.
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