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Inspector Maigret #24
L'ispettore Cadavre
Per tutti, dalle vecchiette appostate dietro le tendine smosse ai ragazzini che poco prima lo avevano superato girandosi a guardarlo con insolenza, lui era l’intruso, l’indesiderabile. O, peggio ancora, era qualcuno di cui non ci si poteva fidare, venuto da chissà dove a fare chissà che cosa. Sarà stato anche per via di quegli sguardi che lo spiavano, ma il commissario, che camminava con le mani sprofondate nelle tasche del pesante cappotto, si sentiva come uno di quegli squallidi personaggi tormentati da un vizio segreto che si aggirano nei paraggi della porte Saint-Martin o altrove con le spalle curve e lo sguardo sfuggente, rasentando le case per prudenza alla vista di un agente della Buoncostume. Era forse un riflesso della triste figura di Cavre? Ebbe quasi voglia di mandare a prendere la sua valigia dai Naud, di salire sul primo treno e di andare dal giudice Bréjon per dirgli: «A Saint-Aubin non mi vogliono... Suo cognato se la sbrogli da sé...».
153 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1943
77 people are currently reading
455 people want to read
About the author
Georges Simenon
2,738 books2,304 followersGeorges Joseph Christian Simenon (1903 – 1989) was a Belgian writer. A prolific author who published nearly 500 novels and numerous short works, Simenon is best known as the creator of the fictional detective Jules Maigret.
Although he never resided in Belgium after 1922, he remained a Belgian citizen throughout his life.
Simenon was one of the most prolific writers of the twentieth century, capable of writing 60 to 80 pages per day. His oeuvre includes nearly 200 novels, over 150 novellas, several autobiographical works, numerous articles, and scores of pulp novels written under more than two dozen pseudonyms. Altogether, about 550 million copies of his works have been printed.
He is best known, however, for his 75 novels and 28 short stories featuring Commissaire Maigret. The first novel in the series, Pietr-le-Letton, appeared in 1931; the last one, Maigret et M. Charles, was published in 1972. The Maigret novels were translated into all major languages and several of them were turned into films and radio plays. Two television series (1960-63 and 1992-93) have been made in Great Britain.
During his "American" period, Simenon reached the height of his creative powers, and several novels of those years were inspired by the context in which they were written (Trois chambres à Manhattan (1946), Maigret à New York (1947), Maigret se fâche (1947)).
Simenon also wrote a large number of "psychological novels", such as La neige était sale (1948) or Le fils (1957), as well as several autobiographical works, in particular Je me souviens (1945), Pedigree (1948), Mémoires intimes (1981).
In 1966, Simenon was given the MWA's highest honor, the Grand Master Award.
In 2005 he was nominated for the title of De Grootste Belg (The Greatest Belgian). In the Flemish version he ended 77th place. In the Walloon version he ended 10th place.
Although he never resided in Belgium after 1922, he remained a Belgian citizen throughout his life.
Simenon was one of the most prolific writers of the twentieth century, capable of writing 60 to 80 pages per day. His oeuvre includes nearly 200 novels, over 150 novellas, several autobiographical works, numerous articles, and scores of pulp novels written under more than two dozen pseudonyms. Altogether, about 550 million copies of his works have been printed.
He is best known, however, for his 75 novels and 28 short stories featuring Commissaire Maigret. The first novel in the series, Pietr-le-Letton, appeared in 1931; the last one, Maigret et M. Charles, was published in 1972. The Maigret novels were translated into all major languages and several of them were turned into films and radio plays. Two television series (1960-63 and 1992-93) have been made in Great Britain.
During his "American" period, Simenon reached the height of his creative powers, and several novels of those years were inspired by the context in which they were written (Trois chambres à Manhattan (1946), Maigret à New York (1947), Maigret se fâche (1947)).
Simenon also wrote a large number of "psychological novels", such as La neige était sale (1948) or Le fils (1957), as well as several autobiographical works, in particular Je me souviens (1945), Pedigree (1948), Mémoires intimes (1981).
In 1966, Simenon was given the MWA's highest honor, the Grand Master Award.
In 2005 he was nominated for the title of De Grootste Belg (The Greatest Belgian). In the Flemish version he ended 77th place. In the Walloon version he ended 10th place.
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January 20, 2025
Lunchtime Listen January 2025
As ever a truly wonderful lunchtime listen, a great story and wonderfully read.
Asked by one of his colleagues to do a favour, Maigret heads off to stay with a well to do family in the middle of the country. Here he is asked to investigate rumours beginning to circulate that the young village lad recently killed by a train was in fact murdered because he was having an affair with the rich man’s daughter.
Despite the investigation being unofficial Maigret sets off the next day to interview everyone in the village that he can. He soon finds that public feeling is with the local village lad, and very clearly against the rich family that Maigret is staying with.
Well treated by the rich family that he is staying with Maigret begins to think they are hiding something and starts to dig deeper into the mystery finding more and more anomalies.
Ad hoc solo series read, unfinished 2019 onwards
So this was the 24th Maigret novel in my ongoing mission to read all of the Maigret novels at the rate of one a month. Ok so I'm currently running a month behind in my self imposed challenge ( so I can always go at my own pace ), but I'm still really enjoying these novels.
I suppose it is the French settings ( I lived in France for almost 5 years ) and the fact that detective novels are one of my favourite genres, that have kept me reading these novels. That and the great writing, the varied plots, the interesting characters in all the books so far and the amazing descriptive powers of the writer.
Maigret is asked by a judiciary colleague to do a favour and investigate the accidental death of a young man in an out of the way village. His colleagues brother in law, despite being the patron of the village, is now coming under increasing speculation that he had something to do with the young lads death as the young lad was sweet on the patron's daughter.
Maigret agrees to intervene in an unofficial capacity and catches the local train on a foggy rainy night from Paris to the country. This novel does not have the normal supporting cast of Maigret's Sergeants and Inspectors, nor his long-suffering but ever-faithful wife, but on the local train he sees an ex police officer who was never popular during his whole career, coincidentally getting off, at the same tiny out of the way station, as himself.
Maigret is met by the Patron and escorted back to his house on the outskirts of the village where he stays for the next few days whilst investigating the death.
He sets about his investigation by speaking to the locals and soon strikes up a conversation with a young man in one of the two "official" village bars, who was a friend of the deceased.
Trailing the young man around the village, clues to the accidental death are soon coming in faster than Maigret can process the:-big money in a jar, the dead lads cap where it shouldn't be, strange messages from the patron's daughter, nosey postmistresses who control all the telephone calls, people providing alibis before being asked, the ex detective skulking around the village and people changing there story.
Maigret , to quote one of the chapter headings, does a Maigret and manages to pull all the clues together late one night in the Patron's sitting room with all the major players including the ex Paris detective present, to reveal the truth, regardless of whether they now want to hear it or not.
An excellent novel that moves swiftly from glorious scene to scene. Hmm is it really only 4 stars, oh ok i will change it up to 5
As ever a truly wonderful lunchtime listen, a great story and wonderfully read.
Asked by one of his colleagues to do a favour, Maigret heads off to stay with a well to do family in the middle of the country. Here he is asked to investigate rumours beginning to circulate that the young village lad recently killed by a train was in fact murdered because he was having an affair with the rich man’s daughter.
Despite the investigation being unofficial Maigret sets off the next day to interview everyone in the village that he can. He soon finds that public feeling is with the local village lad, and very clearly against the rich family that Maigret is staying with.
Well treated by the rich family that he is staying with Maigret begins to think they are hiding something and starts to dig deeper into the mystery finding more and more anomalies.
Ad hoc solo series read, unfinished 2019 onwards
So this was the 24th Maigret novel in my ongoing mission to read all of the Maigret novels at the rate of one a month. Ok so I'm currently running a month behind in my self imposed challenge ( so I can always go at my own pace ), but I'm still really enjoying these novels.
I suppose it is the French settings ( I lived in France for almost 5 years ) and the fact that detective novels are one of my favourite genres, that have kept me reading these novels. That and the great writing, the varied plots, the interesting characters in all the books so far and the amazing descriptive powers of the writer.
Maigret is asked by a judiciary colleague to do a favour and investigate the accidental death of a young man in an out of the way village. His colleagues brother in law, despite being the patron of the village, is now coming under increasing speculation that he had something to do with the young lads death as the young lad was sweet on the patron's daughter.
Maigret agrees to intervene in an unofficial capacity and catches the local train on a foggy rainy night from Paris to the country. This novel does not have the normal supporting cast of Maigret's Sergeants and Inspectors, nor his long-suffering but ever-faithful wife, but on the local train he sees an ex police officer who was never popular during his whole career, coincidentally getting off, at the same tiny out of the way station, as himself.
Maigret is met by the Patron and escorted back to his house on the outskirts of the village where he stays for the next few days whilst investigating the death.
He sets about his investigation by speaking to the locals and soon strikes up a conversation with a young man in one of the two "official" village bars, who was a friend of the deceased.
Trailing the young man around the village, clues to the accidental death are soon coming in faster than Maigret can process the:-big money in a jar, the dead lads cap where it shouldn't be, strange messages from the patron's daughter, nosey postmistresses who control all the telephone calls, people providing alibis before being asked, the ex detective skulking around the village and people changing there story.
Maigret , to quote one of the chapter headings, does a Maigret and manages to pull all the clues together late one night in the Patron's sitting room with all the major players including the ex Paris detective present, to reveal the truth, regardless of whether they now want to hear it or not.
An excellent novel that moves swiftly from glorious scene to scene. Hmm is it really only 4 stars, oh ok i will change it up to 5
November 12, 2022
Once opened, I couldn't close the book until I finished it, if this is not to say the particular atmosphere that Simenon managed to create in this Maigret.
A magnificent opus where Maigret goes to a Vendée village drowned in fog, and that's how its inhabitants and guests would like Maigret to be and stay. This fact is obviously without considering our investigator's good-natured insight.
A perfect moment of relaxation!
A magnificent opus where Maigret goes to a Vendée village drowned in fog, and that's how its inhabitants and guests would like Maigret to be and stay. This fact is obviously without considering our investigator's good-natured insight.
A perfect moment of relaxation!
March 3, 2013
Sometimes I am surprised that Georges Simenon's work is not part of the literature curriculum. He did for France what Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett did for the United States and what G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, and Josephine Tey did for Britain. Although he was more prolific in his mysteries than all the other authors I have named put together, his work could stand comparison with the best.
Inspector Maigret is a mystery in his own right. Unlike Edgar Allan Poe's notion of a tale of ratiocination, Inspector Cadaver gives us a detective who absorbs with the help of intuition more than he reasons from dry facts. In fact, his case comes together when one of the characters, Alban Groult-Cotelle quite unnecessarily presents a receipt as alibi that he was not involved in a murder -- before it was ever suspected that he was involved. Maigret's response is classic: "Don't you know ... that there is a saying in the police force that he that has has the best alibi is all the more suspect?"
That starts the Inspector on a train of thought:
In a few pages more, we see some progress has been made:
Inspector Cadaver was written during the War under German (or was it Vichy?) occupation, and its atmosphere of grimness partakes of the time. And yet, and yet, Simenon, whenever he sets a tale in the provinces, creates an intriguing combination of ugly weather and pompous, ugly characters.
Inspector Maigret is a mystery in his own right. Unlike Edgar Allan Poe's notion of a tale of ratiocination, Inspector Cadaver gives us a detective who absorbs with the help of intuition more than he reasons from dry facts. In fact, his case comes together when one of the characters, Alban Groult-Cotelle quite unnecessarily presents a receipt as alibi that he was not involved in a murder -- before it was ever suspected that he was involved. Maigret's response is classic: "Don't you know ... that there is a saying in the police force that he that has has the best alibi is all the more suspect?"
That starts the Inspector on a train of thought:
The minute he left the house, an idea had occurred to him. It was not even an idea, but something vaguer, so vague that he was now striving to recapture the memory of it. Every now and then, an insignificant occurrence, usually a whiff of something barely caught, reminds us in the space of a second of a particular moment in our life. It is such a vivid sensation that we are gripped by it and want to cling to this living reminder of that moment. It disappears almost at ojnce and with it all recollection of the experience. Try as we might, we end up wondering, for want of an answer to our questions, if it was not an unconscious evocation of a dream, or, who knows, of some pre-existent world?I love reading about Maigret's train of thought, because it is not only unique in the genre, but fascinating as an expression of the French concept of débrouillage, working one's way through a mental fog.
In a few pages more, we see some progress has been made:
At such moments, Maigret seemed to puff himself up out of all proportion and become slow-witted and stodgy, like someone blind and dumb who is unaware of what is going on around him. Indeed, if anyone not forewarned was to walk past or talk to Maigret when he was in one of these moods, he would more than likely take him for a fat idiot or a fat sleepyhead.Try to get Sherlock Holmes or Philip Marlowe to admit to something like this! He never thinks, and the facts come to him the way a sponge absorbs fluid. What Maigret does is allow the patterns to form by themselves in his mind. Now he is ready to pounce!
"So, you're concentrating on your thoughts?" said someone who prided himself on his psychological perception.
And Maigret had replied with comic sincerity:
"I never think."
And it was almost true. For Maigret was not thinking now, as he stood in the damp, cold street. He was not following through an idea. One might say he was rather like a sponge.
Inspector Cadaver was written during the War under German (or was it Vichy?) occupation, and its atmosphere of grimness partakes of the time. And yet, and yet, Simenon, whenever he sets a tale in the provinces, creates an intriguing combination of ugly weather and pompous, ugly characters.
April 5, 2021
In questi giorni di lockdown ho deciso di affrontare quotidianamente i Maigret che stazionano nella mia libreria. E’ una specie di gioco, ma non è solo per passare il tempo, mi sta servendo per rientrare in sintonia con il Simenon di Maigret. Ogni storia presenta delle particolarità.
Quella letta oggi è, per quel che ne sappia, un unicum, perché il commissario non indaga ufficialmente come capo della polizia parigina ma si reca in un paesino della provincia contadina francese, Saint Aubin, per investigare sulla morte di un ragazzo, di cui viene accusato, senza che sia stata aperta una inchiesta ma solo sulla base di lettere anonime, il cognato del giudice istruttore amico di Maigret. In pratica Maigret fa un piacere ad un amico.
Questa è la principale novità: Maigret non ha i poteri di polizia, si reca lì da privato, ed incontra un altro investigatore privato, l’ex ispettore Cadavre, chiamato anche lui a Saint Aubin per lo stesso scopo. Nasce una competizione tra i due “investigatori”, sembra che facciano una gara di resistenza, per un certo tempo è Cadavre a sorpassare il commissario, Maigret sembra spiazzato, il paese è piccolo, le persone sono diffidenti e non collaborano, il silenzio e le bugie di chi non vuole poliziotti ficcanasi tra i piedi ostacolano ogni passo in avanti nella soluzione del caso.
Anche questa è una novità: vedere un commissario che ha i suoi metodi di indagine ed ha una schiera di collaboratori al Quai des Orfevres che eseguono alla lettera le sue indicazioni comportarsi come un poliziotto privato, stare in silenzio, osservare tutto ciò che accade intorno a lui, i gesti e gli sguardi delle persone coinvolte nel caso e poi…. alla fine ecco che spunta il “vero Maigret”.
“La pipa fra i denti, le mani in tasca, la schiena rivolta al fuoco, parlò, borbottò, smosse i ceppi con la punta delle molle, andò dall’uno all’altro dei presenti con una pesante andatura da orso, apostrofandoli o facendo cadere di colpo un silenzio angoscioso”. Signori e signore, il caso è risolto.
Quella letta oggi è, per quel che ne sappia, un unicum, perché il commissario non indaga ufficialmente come capo della polizia parigina ma si reca in un paesino della provincia contadina francese, Saint Aubin, per investigare sulla morte di un ragazzo, di cui viene accusato, senza che sia stata aperta una inchiesta ma solo sulla base di lettere anonime, il cognato del giudice istruttore amico di Maigret. In pratica Maigret fa un piacere ad un amico.
Questa è la principale novità: Maigret non ha i poteri di polizia, si reca lì da privato, ed incontra un altro investigatore privato, l’ex ispettore Cadavre, chiamato anche lui a Saint Aubin per lo stesso scopo. Nasce una competizione tra i due “investigatori”, sembra che facciano una gara di resistenza, per un certo tempo è Cadavre a sorpassare il commissario, Maigret sembra spiazzato, il paese è piccolo, le persone sono diffidenti e non collaborano, il silenzio e le bugie di chi non vuole poliziotti ficcanasi tra i piedi ostacolano ogni passo in avanti nella soluzione del caso.
Anche questa è una novità: vedere un commissario che ha i suoi metodi di indagine ed ha una schiera di collaboratori al Quai des Orfevres che eseguono alla lettera le sue indicazioni comportarsi come un poliziotto privato, stare in silenzio, osservare tutto ciò che accade intorno a lui, i gesti e gli sguardi delle persone coinvolte nel caso e poi…. alla fine ecco che spunta il “vero Maigret”.
“La pipa fra i denti, le mani in tasca, la schiena rivolta al fuoco, parlò, borbottò, smosse i ceppi con la punta delle molle, andò dall’uno all’altro dei presenti con una pesante andatura da orso, apostrofandoli o facendo cadere di colpo un silenzio angoscioso”. Signori e signore, il caso è risolto.
September 17, 2019
Tutto si aggiusta
Ennesima gita in provincia per Maigret, uno degli stratagemmi più tipici usati da Simenon per divagare dalle atmosfere parigine, sfruttando l'ovvio meccanismo che colloca un personaggio in un ambiente a lui estraneo, generando reazioni inaspettate. La prima volta. Poi un po' ci si abitua.
Vandea, nebbie e paludi, un incidente mortale, un giudice parigino chiede un favore al Commissario Capo: i suoi parenti sono oggetto di lettere anonime. Vada a dare un'occhiata, li metta tranquilli. Anche in Francia tengono famiglia.
Ovviamente, la provincia è un verminaio, ovviamente il marcio abbonda, ovviamente Maigret sarà blandito e respinto allo stesso tempo da coloro che avrebbe dovuto aiutare e che di lui, in realtà, non vogliono saperne.
Con tutti questi "ovviamente", sembra di parlare di un racconto dozzinale, invece Simenon cava dal cilindro due o tre personaggi all'apparenza minori, uno dei quali mi è piaciuto molto, il giovane Louis, amico del morto e pronto a tutto per dimostrare la fondatezza dei suoi sospetti. Un bel ritratto, in bilico tra timidezza e sfacciataggine, rabbia e paura (del famoso Commissario, dei potenti del paese, delle conseguenze per sè e la sua modesta famiglia).
Alla fine, lo strano rapporto tra i due si interrompe senza nemmeno un saluto, Maigret riparte per Parigi senza aver veramente risolto (per una volta) il caso. Il morto rimane senza giustizia e il delitto senza colpevoli.
Solo sul binario, mentre aspetta il primo treno del mattino, Maigret parla da solo, parla a Louis che non ha più rivisto, che forse è lui stesso di un tempo, da giovane.
C'è un'espressione che mi sembra la più orrenda di tutto il vocabolario, colto o popolare che sia, un'espressione che mi fa sobbalzare e digrignare i denti ogni volta che la sento... "Tutto si aggiusta"
Ennesima gita in provincia per Maigret, uno degli stratagemmi più tipici usati da Simenon per divagare dalle atmosfere parigine, sfruttando l'ovvio meccanismo che colloca un personaggio in un ambiente a lui estraneo, generando reazioni inaspettate. La prima volta. Poi un po' ci si abitua.
Vandea, nebbie e paludi, un incidente mortale, un giudice parigino chiede un favore al Commissario Capo: i suoi parenti sono oggetto di lettere anonime. Vada a dare un'occhiata, li metta tranquilli. Anche in Francia tengono famiglia.
Ovviamente, la provincia è un verminaio, ovviamente il marcio abbonda, ovviamente Maigret sarà blandito e respinto allo stesso tempo da coloro che avrebbe dovuto aiutare e che di lui, in realtà, non vogliono saperne.
Con tutti questi "ovviamente", sembra di parlare di un racconto dozzinale, invece Simenon cava dal cilindro due o tre personaggi all'apparenza minori, uno dei quali mi è piaciuto molto, il giovane Louis, amico del morto e pronto a tutto per dimostrare la fondatezza dei suoi sospetti. Un bel ritratto, in bilico tra timidezza e sfacciataggine, rabbia e paura (del famoso Commissario, dei potenti del paese, delle conseguenze per sè e la sua modesta famiglia).
Alla fine, lo strano rapporto tra i due si interrompe senza nemmeno un saluto, Maigret riparte per Parigi senza aver veramente risolto (per una volta) il caso. Il morto rimane senza giustizia e il delitto senza colpevoli.
Solo sul binario, mentre aspetta il primo treno del mattino, Maigret parla da solo, parla a Louis che non ha più rivisto, che forse è lui stesso di un tempo, da giovane.
C'è un'espressione che mi sembra la più orrenda di tutto il vocabolario, colto o popolare che sia, un'espressione che mi fa sobbalzare e digrignare i denti ogni volta che la sento... "Tutto si aggiusta"
February 22, 2021
Il commissario Maigret si trova ad indagare fuori Parigi, in un paesino piccolo di provincia, invitato in maniera non ufficiale da un suo amico giudice: un ragazzo è stato travolto da un treno, ma ben presto il Nostro scoprirà che era stato prima ucciso e poi gettato sui binari.
Ritrovo un Maigret silenzioso, chiuso in sé, meditabondo e non pare interessargli più di tanto scoprire la verità del delitto ma preferisce, come sempre, lasciarsi assorbire dalle personalità degli abitanti e dei presunti protagonisti della sua indagine. Un Maigret che non sembra più lui, quasi si sdoppia, quasi si lascia andare. Ma dopo qualche capitolo di "sbandamento" ritorna ad essere quell'acuto investigatore che non può fare a meno di essere (ce l'ha nel sangue), spinto anche dal fatto che non è l'unico ad indagare al caso: difatti segue e incontra spesso una sua vecchia conoscenza, l'ispettore Cavre che lui ha soprannonimato Cadavre (cadavere) per il suo aspetto lugubre, doppiogiochista. Lo infastidisce il fatto che questo collega lo anticipa nelle mosse e nei ragionamenti, arrivando sempre prima di lui, ma vedremo che gli manca una dote indispensabile a un vero segugio e che ha solo Maigret: il sesto senso che ti porta a capire come si sono svolte davvero le cose. Solo il commissario riesce ad inzupparsi delle reazioni e dei ragionamenti dei protagonisti della vicenda, riuscendo a ricostruire cosa li ha spinti a compiere determinate azioni.
Riconfermo che leggere Simenon è sempre un piacere, era uno scrittore appassionato e che riesce a farti appassionare alle indagini.
Ritrovo un Maigret silenzioso, chiuso in sé, meditabondo e non pare interessargli più di tanto scoprire la verità del delitto ma preferisce, come sempre, lasciarsi assorbire dalle personalità degli abitanti e dei presunti protagonisti della sua indagine. Un Maigret che non sembra più lui, quasi si sdoppia, quasi si lascia andare. Ma dopo qualche capitolo di "sbandamento" ritorna ad essere quell'acuto investigatore che non può fare a meno di essere (ce l'ha nel sangue), spinto anche dal fatto che non è l'unico ad indagare al caso: difatti segue e incontra spesso una sua vecchia conoscenza, l'ispettore Cavre che lui ha soprannonimato Cadavre (cadavere) per il suo aspetto lugubre, doppiogiochista. Lo infastidisce il fatto che questo collega lo anticipa nelle mosse e nei ragionamenti, arrivando sempre prima di lui, ma vedremo che gli manca una dote indispensabile a un vero segugio e che ha solo Maigret: il sesto senso che ti porta a capire come si sono svolte davvero le cose. Solo il commissario riesce ad inzupparsi delle reazioni e dei ragionamenti dei protagonisti della vicenda, riuscendo a ricostruire cosa li ha spinti a compiere determinate azioni.
Riconfermo che leggere Simenon è sempre un piacere, era uno scrittore appassionato e che riesce a farti appassionare alle indagini.
October 24, 2019
Another enjoyable read. Maigret asked to unofficially investigate the death of a young man apparently hit by a train. He is put up of the house of a colleague who is suspected of murdering the young man. As always the story is atmospheric set in a town amongst bogs and rivers. The town is enveloped by a fog which adds to the cold, damp atmosphere.
Arriving by train an ex colleague on the train also gets off. Nicknamed Inspector Cadaver and forced off the force due to corruption and now a seedy private detective. The family he is staying with is tense, hiding something, people are coming into money such as the victims mother and a drunk who found the dead mans cap away from where he was killed.
Slowly Maigret absorbs the village and follows his process to deduce what happened. A young man, daughter of his host and the dodgy freeloader friend who is also cowardly and hiding something. The ending is great with Maigret going back to Paris without arresting anyone but still getting a form of justice.
Arriving by train an ex colleague on the train also gets off. Nicknamed Inspector Cadaver and forced off the force due to corruption and now a seedy private detective. The family he is staying with is tense, hiding something, people are coming into money such as the victims mother and a drunk who found the dead mans cap away from where he was killed.
Slowly Maigret absorbs the village and follows his process to deduce what happened. A young man, daughter of his host and the dodgy freeloader friend who is also cowardly and hiding something. The ending is great with Maigret going back to Paris without arresting anyone but still getting a form of justice.
January 19, 2022
An engaging, vividly and concisely described crime fiction novel about detective Maigret investigating the suspected foul play of a young man found dead on the railway track. At first everyone believed it was an accident, but since then, rumours have gone round. Etienne Naud, a wealthy man, is accused, virtually to his face, of killing the young man. Maigret, asked by a friend, arrives in the small provincial town of Saint-Aubin-les-Marias, on the same train as an adversary, the pale, shifty ex-policeman, nicknamed ‘Inspector Cadaver’.
Another very satisfying Maigret reading experience. This book is the 24th novel in the Maigret series.
This book was first published in 1944.
Another very satisfying Maigret reading experience. This book is the 24th novel in the Maigret series.
This book was first published in 1944.
August 31, 2023
Dost Yayınları tarafından basılan -ve ulaşabildiğim-, Georges Simenon’un iki ‘Komiser Maigret’ romanından ikincisi.
Ataç çevirisi bir Maigret romanı. Bazı kitaplarında olduğu gibi boşlukların bulunmadığı, tüm unsurları ve detayları ile ilginç ve müthiş bir hikaye. Merak uyandıran, sürükleyici, akıcı bir metin.
Ataç, isimlerin Türkçe okunuşlarını yazmayı tercih etmiş, bu, okurken beni rahatsız etti. Bunun dışında çeviride, -zaman zaman geçmiş dönemlerde kullanılan eskimiş bir Türkçe yer alsa da- güzel bir Türkçe ve gramer var.
Çok beğendim.
Ataç çevirisi bir Maigret romanı. Bazı kitaplarında olduğu gibi boşlukların bulunmadığı, tüm unsurları ve detayları ile ilginç ve müthiş bir hikaye. Merak uyandıran, sürükleyici, akıcı bir metin.
Ataç, isimlerin Türkçe okunuşlarını yazmayı tercih etmiş, bu, okurken beni rahatsız etti. Bunun dışında çeviride, -zaman zaman geçmiş dönemlerde kullanılan eskimiş bir Türkçe yer alsa da- güzel bir Türkçe ve gramer var.
Çok beğendim.
February 23, 2018
Non uno dei migliori. Un pò noioso ma non me la sento di dare due quindi metto un tre. Ne ho letti di migliori. (Per gli altri sette precedenti seguire link nel profilo)
November 19, 2019
What can I say? Another delightful Simenon. My collection is getting frighteningly short. Time to start buying some more. I am thankful Simenon was such a prolific writer.
In this mystery, Inspector Maigret is asked by the examining magistrate, Brejon, to visit his small, parochial home town and do a little investigating, unofficial of course, on a death that occurred there. A man's body was found run over by a train, but there are suspicions that he was actually murdered and by Brejon's brother-in-law.
Maigret uncovers many things. Of course he finds answers to the mystery, but he also exposes an ugly side of human nature: the willingness to sacrifice justice for the sake of appearances and peace and quiet.
This was my fun read this past weekend.
In this mystery, Inspector Maigret is asked by the examining magistrate, Brejon, to visit his small, parochial home town and do a little investigating, unofficial of course, on a death that occurred there. A man's body was found run over by a train, but there are suspicions that he was actually murdered and by Brejon's brother-in-law.
Maigret uncovers many things. Of course he finds answers to the mystery, but he also exposes an ugly side of human nature: the willingness to sacrifice justice for the sake of appearances and peace and quiet.
This was my fun read this past weekend.
October 15, 2013
Simenon non perde l'occasione nei suoi gialli di mostrare che in fondo, un omicidio nasconde dietro di sé, prima di tutto, un caso umano e indubbiamente, lui è in grado di coglierne e registrarne ogni sfumatura.
July 13, 2017
Another superb Maigret episode.
Let me include here a Penguin books introduction from 2003 which shows why Simenon is a great writer, not just a great crime writer:
"Inspector Cadaver
Introduction
The Other Side
Inspector Cadaver was written in 1943, when Georges Simenon was living in a country retreat in the marshy Vendée region of France with his wife Tigy, his mistress Boule and his small son Marc. The book is set in the Vendée, in a small town Simenon calls Saint-Aubin-les-Marais. It's the kind of place in which everyone knows each other's business; where gossip and rumour help to alleviate boredom and despair. Superintendent Maigret of the Police Judiciaire arrives in Saint-Aubin on a curious mission, following a request from the examining magistrate Victor Bréjon in the Palais de Justice in Paris to stay with Bréjon's brother-in-law, a wealthy farmer named Etienne Naud. A young man, Albert Retailleau, had been found dead on the railway line near Naud's house, and rumours are rife in the town that Naud had somehow been involved in the accident, if such it was.
On the journey to Saint-Aubin, Maigret is surprised to see Justin Cavre, a disgraced policeman now turned private detective, on the same train. Cavre had worked under Maigret some years earlier, earning the nickname Cadavre (Cadaver) from his fellow officers because of his sullen, moody behaviour. Cavre had been discharged from the force after it was learnt that he had accepted bribes in order to boost his salary. He was – and, presumably, still is – in romantic thrall to a wife with expensive tastes. The pale, miserable-looking man ignores his former chief as they wait on the platform and in the buffet at Niort for their connection to Saint-Aubin. They will speak eventually, towards the end of the novel, in circumstances that are in every way surprising.
Speaking to a newspaper reporter in 1963, Simenon observed:
Don't forget that the policeman was often born in the same street as the criminal, had the same sort of childhood, stole sweets from the same sweetshop ... Deep down the policeman understands the criminal because he could so easily have become one. They inhabit the same underworld.
Maigret is one such policeman. In book after book, he is driven to hide the fact that he feels a certain sympathy, or even empathy, for the broken individual he is questioning. It's this aspect of his complex character that makes him so different from, and so much more believable than, most other fictional sleuths. Simenon invests him with an entirely credible sense of decency. Maigret is aware that, given peculiar circumstances, he too might have committed a similar crime. It's a knowledge he has to keep to himself, for professional reasons, but his creator lets the reader in on the secret. During the tortuous course of Inspector Cadaver, Maigret identifies a murderer, from whom he elicits a pained confession, yet it isn't this deluded person the superintendent finds himself despising. He looks beyond the murder, and sees another criminal who will evade being brought to justice for ever. He loathes what he sees, and gives his loathing frustrated expression. Maigret, for once, hits out – quite literally, with the palm of his hand.
To describe Simenon as a crime writer is to do him a serious and unwarranted injustice. He is, on his good days – and he had lots of good days – a great novelist. The sheer range of his understanding of the human heart, of what it means to be brought low by passion or the need for money, is unparalleled in twentieth-century fiction.Inspector Cadaver, on first examination, may appear to have been written to a formula, but a second reading reveals its subtle shadings. Its depiction of provincial snobbery and hypocrisy, the two entwined, and of the huge gulf between Them and Us, is chillingly exact. The gullible Albert and his deeply honest best friend Louis Fillou are destined from birth to be on the 'other side' in this kind of squirearchical society, coming as they do from peasant families. One is destroyed by the truth, the other betrayed by its repression. Both hapless young men are referred to in the shocking last paragraph of the book, by way of acknowledging the harm that has been done to them. The reference honours them as well, for their very existence in a corrupt and demeaning milieu.
The fabulously rich Simenon – whose sales almost equalled those of Shakespeare and the scribes responsible for the Bible – never forgot what it was like to be impoverished, and in this novel he demonstrates to what obscene lengths some people will go to buy the next drink or, in one appalling case, keep quiet. Simenon is the consummate expert on pettiness, an aspect of human nature that tends to be satirized by writers as diverse as Dickens and Jane Austen. Simenon plays pettiness straight, as he does stinginess or meanness of spirit. He makes no judgement, even a comic one. He simply – and how apt 'simply' is – remarks that X is tight-fisted and that Y has an inner life that could be in absentia. He then gets on with the story.
And what a story it is – the more intriguing for being so publicly unspoken. At one point in the narrative, Maigret realizes that without the impassioned assistance of the pock-marked Louis he would never have discovered what he does discover. Louis opens doors, but he also opens mouths that were determined to stay shut. In a brilliant conceit, the famous superintendent realizes that the earnest carpenter might be outwitting him in the matter of detection. He is exasperated and keen to be rid of the youth without whom he – despite his considerable expertise – would be threshing about in the dark. It transpires that Louis is the original instigator of the rumours concerning Etienne Naud. He admits to Maigret that he sent three unsigned letters to the Director of Public Prosecutions in nearby Fontenay-le-Comte on learning of the discovery of Albert's body on the railway line. Louis is convinced that his friend would not have taken his own life, and it is that conviction that causes him to be – if only for a moment or two – the superior detective.
'I consider myself an impressionist, because I work by touches. I believe a ray of sun on a nose is as important as a deep thought,' Simenon once said of his method of writing. Inspector Cadaver is full of 'touches'. The town's postman, for example, has been illiterately nicknamed Josaphat, instead of Jehoshaphat:
'He's called Josaphat because when his wife died he had more to drink than usual and kept on saying through his tears: ''Goodbye, Céline ... We'll meet again in the valley of Josaphat ... Count on me.'''
And then there is the forbidding Clémentine Bréjon, Etienne's mother-in-law, who is instantly captured as a 'small, sprightly old lady with a wry expression on her face reminiscent of that on the busts of Voltaire'. One sees that curled lip, and hears her 'curious falsetto voice' as she casually insults the bemused Superintendent Maigret. The reader is not told that she is an arrogant snob. Her arrogance and snobbishness are conveyed, effortlessly, through the words Simenon gives her to speak. She inhabits only one scene, but she leaves an indelible impression.
Simenon limited himself to a vocabulary of 2,000 words, acting on the advice of Colette, who warned him against writing 'beautiful sentences'. He is avowedly not a 'poetic' novelist, with all that term implies of self-conscious stylishness. He doesn't invite his readers to pause and coo over a finely turned phrase. The tale is paramount, and the manner of telling it economical and necessary. Yet the cumulative effect in his finest novels, especially those he called romans durs, is haunting and unforgettable. Those petty lives reverberate in the mind. Simenon is the connoisseur of wasted opportunities, of men and women who take the wrong turning at the crossroads. Poor Albert, poor desperate Louis – the two victims in Inspector Cadaver – are drawn without sentimentality, with no encroaching pity on the author's part, but their plight stays with the reader. That is Simenon's crafty and humane intention.
Inspector Cadaver was originally published in English with the feeble title Maigret's Rival. The book isn't really about rivalry. It's concerned with a certain mortification of the spirit, as exemplified by Justin Cavre and the soi-disant aristocrat Alban Groult-Cotelle, a man whose worthlessness is demonstrated with a multitude of 'touches'.
The flaws in Simenon's life have been well-documented, particularly in his preening memoirs. He was extraordinarily productive: 76 Maigret novels, and 117 romans durs. Yet writing was agony for him, and had to be done quickly. In his greatest books he ventures into the abyss, confronting desolation head-on. The composer and diarist Ned Rorem conveys the essence of his genius in an astute entry in Lies: A Diary 1986–1999. He writes:
As Balzac and Proust described the ills of the Western world by refracting those ills almost solely through the upper classes, so Simenon, like Genet, reflected the world as seen through the eyes of criminals or the very poor. There was nothing he did not know, and nothing he could not describe. His knowledge embraced every branch of human learning, and his description came through the use of the specific, as distinct from the general, adjective.
Exactly.
Paul Bailey
Penguin, 2003"
Home Bibliography Reference Forum Plots Texts Simenon Gallery Shopping Film Links
Let me include here a Penguin books introduction from 2003 which shows why Simenon is a great writer, not just a great crime writer:
"Inspector Cadaver
Introduction
The Other Side
Inspector Cadaver was written in 1943, when Georges Simenon was living in a country retreat in the marshy Vendée region of France with his wife Tigy, his mistress Boule and his small son Marc. The book is set in the Vendée, in a small town Simenon calls Saint-Aubin-les-Marais. It's the kind of place in which everyone knows each other's business; where gossip and rumour help to alleviate boredom and despair. Superintendent Maigret of the Police Judiciaire arrives in Saint-Aubin on a curious mission, following a request from the examining magistrate Victor Bréjon in the Palais de Justice in Paris to stay with Bréjon's brother-in-law, a wealthy farmer named Etienne Naud. A young man, Albert Retailleau, had been found dead on the railway line near Naud's house, and rumours are rife in the town that Naud had somehow been involved in the accident, if such it was.
On the journey to Saint-Aubin, Maigret is surprised to see Justin Cavre, a disgraced policeman now turned private detective, on the same train. Cavre had worked under Maigret some years earlier, earning the nickname Cadavre (Cadaver) from his fellow officers because of his sullen, moody behaviour. Cavre had been discharged from the force after it was learnt that he had accepted bribes in order to boost his salary. He was – and, presumably, still is – in romantic thrall to a wife with expensive tastes. The pale, miserable-looking man ignores his former chief as they wait on the platform and in the buffet at Niort for their connection to Saint-Aubin. They will speak eventually, towards the end of the novel, in circumstances that are in every way surprising.
Speaking to a newspaper reporter in 1963, Simenon observed:
Don't forget that the policeman was often born in the same street as the criminal, had the same sort of childhood, stole sweets from the same sweetshop ... Deep down the policeman understands the criminal because he could so easily have become one. They inhabit the same underworld.
Maigret is one such policeman. In book after book, he is driven to hide the fact that he feels a certain sympathy, or even empathy, for the broken individual he is questioning. It's this aspect of his complex character that makes him so different from, and so much more believable than, most other fictional sleuths. Simenon invests him with an entirely credible sense of decency. Maigret is aware that, given peculiar circumstances, he too might have committed a similar crime. It's a knowledge he has to keep to himself, for professional reasons, but his creator lets the reader in on the secret. During the tortuous course of Inspector Cadaver, Maigret identifies a murderer, from whom he elicits a pained confession, yet it isn't this deluded person the superintendent finds himself despising. He looks beyond the murder, and sees another criminal who will evade being brought to justice for ever. He loathes what he sees, and gives his loathing frustrated expression. Maigret, for once, hits out – quite literally, with the palm of his hand.
To describe Simenon as a crime writer is to do him a serious and unwarranted injustice. He is, on his good days – and he had lots of good days – a great novelist. The sheer range of his understanding of the human heart, of what it means to be brought low by passion or the need for money, is unparalleled in twentieth-century fiction.Inspector Cadaver, on first examination, may appear to have been written to a formula, but a second reading reveals its subtle shadings. Its depiction of provincial snobbery and hypocrisy, the two entwined, and of the huge gulf between Them and Us, is chillingly exact. The gullible Albert and his deeply honest best friend Louis Fillou are destined from birth to be on the 'other side' in this kind of squirearchical society, coming as they do from peasant families. One is destroyed by the truth, the other betrayed by its repression. Both hapless young men are referred to in the shocking last paragraph of the book, by way of acknowledging the harm that has been done to them. The reference honours them as well, for their very existence in a corrupt and demeaning milieu.
The fabulously rich Simenon – whose sales almost equalled those of Shakespeare and the scribes responsible for the Bible – never forgot what it was like to be impoverished, and in this novel he demonstrates to what obscene lengths some people will go to buy the next drink or, in one appalling case, keep quiet. Simenon is the consummate expert on pettiness, an aspect of human nature that tends to be satirized by writers as diverse as Dickens and Jane Austen. Simenon plays pettiness straight, as he does stinginess or meanness of spirit. He makes no judgement, even a comic one. He simply – and how apt 'simply' is – remarks that X is tight-fisted and that Y has an inner life that could be in absentia. He then gets on with the story.
And what a story it is – the more intriguing for being so publicly unspoken. At one point in the narrative, Maigret realizes that without the impassioned assistance of the pock-marked Louis he would never have discovered what he does discover. Louis opens doors, but he also opens mouths that were determined to stay shut. In a brilliant conceit, the famous superintendent realizes that the earnest carpenter might be outwitting him in the matter of detection. He is exasperated and keen to be rid of the youth without whom he – despite his considerable expertise – would be threshing about in the dark. It transpires that Louis is the original instigator of the rumours concerning Etienne Naud. He admits to Maigret that he sent three unsigned letters to the Director of Public Prosecutions in nearby Fontenay-le-Comte on learning of the discovery of Albert's body on the railway line. Louis is convinced that his friend would not have taken his own life, and it is that conviction that causes him to be – if only for a moment or two – the superior detective.
'I consider myself an impressionist, because I work by touches. I believe a ray of sun on a nose is as important as a deep thought,' Simenon once said of his method of writing. Inspector Cadaver is full of 'touches'. The town's postman, for example, has been illiterately nicknamed Josaphat, instead of Jehoshaphat:
'He's called Josaphat because when his wife died he had more to drink than usual and kept on saying through his tears: ''Goodbye, Céline ... We'll meet again in the valley of Josaphat ... Count on me.'''
And then there is the forbidding Clémentine Bréjon, Etienne's mother-in-law, who is instantly captured as a 'small, sprightly old lady with a wry expression on her face reminiscent of that on the busts of Voltaire'. One sees that curled lip, and hears her 'curious falsetto voice' as she casually insults the bemused Superintendent Maigret. The reader is not told that she is an arrogant snob. Her arrogance and snobbishness are conveyed, effortlessly, through the words Simenon gives her to speak. She inhabits only one scene, but she leaves an indelible impression.
Simenon limited himself to a vocabulary of 2,000 words, acting on the advice of Colette, who warned him against writing 'beautiful sentences'. He is avowedly not a 'poetic' novelist, with all that term implies of self-conscious stylishness. He doesn't invite his readers to pause and coo over a finely turned phrase. The tale is paramount, and the manner of telling it economical and necessary. Yet the cumulative effect in his finest novels, especially those he called romans durs, is haunting and unforgettable. Those petty lives reverberate in the mind. Simenon is the connoisseur of wasted opportunities, of men and women who take the wrong turning at the crossroads. Poor Albert, poor desperate Louis – the two victims in Inspector Cadaver – are drawn without sentimentality, with no encroaching pity on the author's part, but their plight stays with the reader. That is Simenon's crafty and humane intention.
Inspector Cadaver was originally published in English with the feeble title Maigret's Rival. The book isn't really about rivalry. It's concerned with a certain mortification of the spirit, as exemplified by Justin Cavre and the soi-disant aristocrat Alban Groult-Cotelle, a man whose worthlessness is demonstrated with a multitude of 'touches'.
The flaws in Simenon's life have been well-documented, particularly in his preening memoirs. He was extraordinarily productive: 76 Maigret novels, and 117 romans durs. Yet writing was agony for him, and had to be done quickly. In his greatest books he ventures into the abyss, confronting desolation head-on. The composer and diarist Ned Rorem conveys the essence of his genius in an astute entry in Lies: A Diary 1986–1999. He writes:
As Balzac and Proust described the ills of the Western world by refracting those ills almost solely through the upper classes, so Simenon, like Genet, reflected the world as seen through the eyes of criminals or the very poor. There was nothing he did not know, and nothing he could not describe. His knowledge embraced every branch of human learning, and his description came through the use of the specific, as distinct from the general, adjective.
Exactly.
Paul Bailey
Penguin, 2003"
Home Bibliography Reference Forum Plots Texts Simenon Gallery Shopping Film Links
October 18, 2011
this is third i've read, and so far my least favourite. i like a lot of what is done in this one: take maigret out of paris, away from his reputation and see how effective an investigator he can be is an interesting to place to go, and to read this one right after the one where i became aware that he feels held apart from others was interesting. but, perhaps based on current mood, i didn't like the conclusion of the novel: it left a bad taste in my mouth. there's always some moral ambiguity in these endings: some internal judgement on whether the murder has been done *matters* and while i could rationalize along with maigret (who is keenly aware he is doing so, and i imagine one would if you investigated murder for a living) in these others i've read, in this one i had a tougher time. i don't know if that's because he made the victim more attractive in this case, less cardboard than in prior outings, or whether it was my own sensibilities allowed for more sympathetic outrage on their part. i still liked it but i'm kind of mad at it.
February 10, 2021
Maigret heeds to an urgent call from an old friend to investigate a murder in a remote village and gets entangled in the local politics of class divide and the intricacies of the motive behind the murder. A tightly written plot with some neat character studies of provincial life.
My Rating - 4/5
My Rating - 4/5
June 20, 2024
Maigret is asked for a favour, he goes to a rich man's home in an isolated village to investigate a death of a young man. Really great ending
November 11, 2019
It has been an interesting journey reading the Maigret novels in order as they were written/published by Georges Simenon.
This one is a complete contrast to the previous book and therefore it demonstrates the scope of the author's writing. Here the mood is established by the weather. the time of year and the community where the crime took place. It is foggy and cold with long dark nights and Maigret finds everyone closes up to questioning wanting to maintain the status quo. However it is due to address the gossipand potential scandal that the Chief Inspector is sent at the request of the Examining Magistrate Victor Bréjon. His brother-in-law, Étienne Naud had approached him for advice since the rumours circulating were that Naud and his family were implicated.
Meanwhile, an old colleague/rival Justin Cavre, Inspector Cadaver arrives on the same train putting Maigret on his mettle and ensuring he will be like a dog with a bone to get to the truth.
The story is well told, interesting it its development and shows the reader fresh insights into the character of detective, even as he is working in an unofficial capacity.
Some fine characters are drawn out and old rural France is seen as quire feudal and set in his ways. Loved the atmosphere and Maigret's persistence which make for an original novel that takes a mystery and brings clarity where only silence and conspiracy seemed to exist.
This one is a complete contrast to the previous book and therefore it demonstrates the scope of the author's writing. Here the mood is established by the weather. the time of year and the community where the crime took place. It is foggy and cold with long dark nights and Maigret finds everyone closes up to questioning wanting to maintain the status quo. However it is due to address the gossipand potential scandal that the Chief Inspector is sent at the request of the Examining Magistrate Victor Bréjon. His brother-in-law, Étienne Naud had approached him for advice since the rumours circulating were that Naud and his family were implicated.
Meanwhile, an old colleague/rival Justin Cavre, Inspector Cadaver arrives on the same train putting Maigret on his mettle and ensuring he will be like a dog with a bone to get to the truth.
The story is well told, interesting it its development and shows the reader fresh insights into the character of detective, even as he is working in an unofficial capacity.
Some fine characters are drawn out and old rural France is seen as quire feudal and set in his ways. Loved the atmosphere and Maigret's persistence which make for an original novel that takes a mystery and brings clarity where only silence and conspiracy seemed to exist.
October 23, 2016
An examining magistrate in Paris asks a favor of Chief Inspector Maigret: unofficially look into the death of a youth in an extremely provincial village in western France. Rumors have emerged that blame the magistrate’s brother-in-law, although the magistrate is certain there’s nothing to them.
But on the train to Saint-Aubin-les-Marais, Maigret catches sight of a onetime colleague: Justin Cavre – a sullen, supercilious thin man nicknamed Old Cadaver, who served with Maigret for 20 years before being forced out over an impropriety. Soon Maigret realizes that both of them are looking into the same case.
There’s no way to explain how deftly author Georges Simenon crafted this gem of a novel without spoiling it. Another five-star novel featuring a gruff hero with feet of clay.
But on the train to Saint-Aubin-les-Marais, Maigret catches sight of a onetime colleague: Justin Cavre – a sullen, supercilious thin man nicknamed Old Cadaver, who served with Maigret for 20 years before being forced out over an impropriety. Soon Maigret realizes that both of them are looking into the same case.
There’s no way to explain how deftly author Georges Simenon crafted this gem of a novel without spoiling it. Another five-star novel featuring a gruff hero with feet of clay.
July 5, 2013
As a favor to a friend (a magistrate), Maigret travels by train to a village in the Vendee to investigate a questionable death, which the community, in an apparent conspiracy of silence, has hushed up. Though kindly taken in by his friend's provincial relations, Maigret is largely accorded the silent treatment as he goes about his investigation. This is not an easy undertaking, as Maigret feels a bit out of his element in a tacitly hostile milieu. What is more: there is also a private investigator, nicknamed Cadaver, who had arrived in the village on the same train as Maigret and soon poses as an obstacle in Maigret's investigation.
This was a good story, easily readable. But I must confess, the ending left me a bit perplexed. Hence, the 3 stars. For any lover of mysteries, judge for yourself the merits of this novel.
This was a good story, easily readable. But I must confess, the ending left me a bit perplexed. Hence, the 3 stars. For any lover of mysteries, judge for yourself the merits of this novel.
February 15, 2022
Ambientazione molto suggestiva ed un Maigret insolito, silenzioso, riflessivo, soprattutto infastidito dalla presenza di un ex collega che sembra precederlo nelle indagini sulla morte di un giovane, in cui si ritrova coinvolto, ma non in forma ufficiale.
In effetti quasi prende le distanze dal caso, interessandosi molto di più alla personalità della gente che è costretto a frequentare e che, nonostante le apparenze e le gentilezze prodigate, lo vede come un intruso, una presenza scomoda, indesiderata.
Ma come al solito la perseveranza premia e il suo acume ricostruirà i fatti e lo condurrà piano piano all’amara soluzione della storia, lasciando una via di fuga ai responsabili. Umanità allo stato puro.
Il coinvolgimento è assicurato. E il piacere della lettura anche.
✍️ GS Maigret
In effetti quasi prende le distanze dal caso, interessandosi molto di più alla personalità della gente che è costretto a frequentare e che, nonostante le apparenze e le gentilezze prodigate, lo vede come un intruso, una presenza scomoda, indesiderata.
Ma come al solito la perseveranza premia e il suo acume ricostruirà i fatti e lo condurrà piano piano all’amara soluzione della storia, lasciando una via di fuga ai responsabili. Umanità allo stato puro.
Il coinvolgimento è assicurato. E il piacere della lettura anche.
✍️ GS Maigret
June 24, 2019
This wasnt a bad read but I couldn't warm to it at all. Not one of my favourites. Not one I would fancy reading again either.
Forgettable and missing something that I like about most of the others, theres always a character you find endearing but none here. Felt a bit off kilter.
Decent but easily surpassed by others.
Forgettable and missing something that I like about most of the others, theres always a character you find endearing but none here. Felt a bit off kilter.
Decent but easily surpassed by others.
February 4, 2023
The writing in this book was really strange. I don't know if it is something that can be chalked up to translation issues or perhaps it's the fact that this is the first book in this series that I've read. Overall, the book itself and the mystery felt lackluster and doesn't inspire me to pick up another book in this series.
January 5, 2020
Siempre es bueno reencontrarse, cada tanto, con un viejo amigo, el Comisario Maigret. En este caso, a pedido de un juez amigo, Maigret viaja, en forma oficiosa a un pequeño pueblo para investigar los rumores vinculados a una extraña muerte. Una magnífica ambientación, la notable caracterización de personajes y situaciones, como la marcada diferenciación social entre la antigua aristocracia rural y los sectores populares, su mirada plena de empatía sobre los dramas sociales y personales y esas dudas que se le plantean a nuestro protagonista sobre como actuar, en un permanente equilibrio entre la verdad, la frialdad de la ley y la verdadera justicia, hacen de esta novela otra obra digna de recomendación.
November 5, 2020
The 24th Inspector Maigret book from 1944 still delivers a good puzzle of intrigue and murder as he can somehow see through people to the truth. A country house is the setting Examining Magistrate Brejon sends him to in service of Brejon's married sister. Maigret is not pleased to arrive on the same train as one of his former employees who is now a PI. He finds a young boy to show him the ropes of the town, providing some humour.
Penguin Classic paperback
Library Loan
Penguin Classic paperback
Library Loan
January 4, 2024
This might be the best Maigret book of all time!
Simenon wrote it a way that I never saw him do and it’s just amazing! The scenery descriptions are better than ever, there’s plenty Maigret inner monologue and enough colourful characters.
At first I was thinking that this was going to be another ‘Holland’, where Maigret is outside his bubble and just fumbles around but I WAS WRONG! Simenon did an amazing job placing Maigret in the town and making himself at home!
Simenon wrote it a way that I never saw him do and it’s just amazing! The scenery descriptions are better than ever, there’s plenty Maigret inner monologue and enough colourful characters.
At first I was thinking that this was going to be another ‘Holland’, where Maigret is outside his bubble and just fumbles around but I WAS WRONG! Simenon did an amazing job placing Maigret in the town and making himself at home!
March 23, 2025
This wasn’t as good as the last Maigret book I read, Signed, Picpus, but it did keep me guessing. A prosecutor asks Maigret as a favor to go to a small town and investigate a death where the prosecutor’s wealthy brother-in-law is a suspect. Everything points toward one conclusion, but nothing is ever as it seems. A slightly unsatisfying ending, but a good exploration of class and morality.
April 4, 2017
an easy and enjoyable read, a bit tame as mysteries go but fits the era of its writing
August 30, 2023
Per me un Maigret al di sopra degli altri. Spietato, amaro e molto avvincente.
December 16, 2017
Very enjoyable until the end, which is not the end we want but what the Inspector, on an unofficial investigation, sees fit to do.
March 30, 2011
This is one of my favorite Maigrets. It's set in a small village, Saint-Aubin, in the west of France, and Simenon masterfully portrays the somewhat claustrophobic nature of this village where everyone knows everyone and their history from years past. There's an in-group and an out-group, and of course it is the out-group of rebels against the stuffy in-group that helps Maigret crack the case. But by the end, we have sympathy for several in-group characters as well.
Parts of Simenon's writing just zing out - for example, "It was extraordinary to think that inside each lighted house people were living in a tiny circle of warmth, like incrustations in the icy infinity of the universe." This is Helen Thomson's translation. Perhaps it wouldn't be quite the same in French...
This mystery features the private detective Cavre, who's been thrown off the force but still is after besting Maigret out of jealousy. His nickname of course is Cadaver...and he threatens to triumph in this case: "In Cavre's wake, as though by magic, evidence melted away, witnesses could remember nothing or refused to speak, and items of unmistakable proof, like the cap, vanished into thin air."
But Maigret triumphs, of course, since he never thinks, but absorbs until he can intuit what is going on in the village. His assistant Lucas says, "There comes a moment in the course of an investigation...when the boss suddenly swells up like a sponge." "He knew what went on inside all those small, low houses nestling in the darkness."
Spongebob Maigret!
Parts of Simenon's writing just zing out - for example, "It was extraordinary to think that inside each lighted house people were living in a tiny circle of warmth, like incrustations in the icy infinity of the universe." This is Helen Thomson's translation. Perhaps it wouldn't be quite the same in French...
This mystery features the private detective Cavre, who's been thrown off the force but still is after besting Maigret out of jealousy. His nickname of course is Cadaver...and he threatens to triumph in this case: "In Cavre's wake, as though by magic, evidence melted away, witnesses could remember nothing or refused to speak, and items of unmistakable proof, like the cap, vanished into thin air."
But Maigret triumphs, of course, since he never thinks, but absorbs until he can intuit what is going on in the village. His assistant Lucas says, "There comes a moment in the course of an investigation...when the boss suddenly swells up like a sponge." "He knew what went on inside all those small, low houses nestling in the darkness."
Spongebob Maigret!
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