Reading the Detectives discussion

Welcome to our Jan/Feb 24 buddy read of The Misty Harbour aka Maigret and the Death of a Harbor-Master / Maigret and Monsieur Labbe. Book 15 in the Inspector Maigret series, first published in 1932.

A man picked up for wandering in obvious distress among the cars and buses on the Grands Boulevards. Questioned in French, he remains mute . . . A madman? In Maigret's office, he is searched. His suit is new, his underwear is new, his shoes are new. All identifying labels have been removed. No identification papers. No wallet. Five crisp thousand-franc bills have been slipped into one of his pockets.

A distressed man is found wandering the streets of Paris, with no memory of who he is or how he got there. The answers lead Maigret to a small harbour town, whose quiet citizens conceal a poisonous malice.

Please feel free to post spoilers in this thread.

I really enjoyed this one. Definitely one of the better books for me.
The title says misty but it is really thick fog that Maigret encounters. I thought the description of the lock in the fog was really well done, giving a sense of the conditions. From then on the story gets more complicated, as Maigret meets the ship hands and harbour workers who make life more difficult. It would seem very few people were telling the truth.

One of my favorites Maigret's so far, but there are a lot to follow. Once again, the atmosphere is one of the best aspects of the series. The scene with Maigret stumbling around in the fog and the ship suddenly looming up like a wall is memorable. An interesting resolution to the mystery.

I didn’t take to this at first, I thought ‘oh no, more dodgy sailors hiding a crime on board’, but it really grew on me. I liked the way Maigret saw through this even after they’d attacked him, and the conspirators were trying to do something good.

Agree with Sandy that the atmosphere is brilliant in these books. The wet foggy quayside and the house with the old lady and her chickens both stick in my mind.

By chance, we watched this as an episode of the Rupert Davis Maigret series.

My problem with the mystery in the book was that there seemed to be inadequate information to work out what had actually happened: in the TV version there was even less information - no explanation by Julie about the boat, and nothing with the elderly company employee, explaining the family background.

It was also set in Honfleur, not Ouisterham - which took the canal out of the mix.

I've just finished this book and enjoyed it overall - I must agree with everyone's comments that the atmosphere is amazing. Waiting around at a harbour in thick fog seems like the quintessential Maigret location.

Rosina, I agree that we don't get the information we would need to have a chance of working out what is going on, but I didn't really mind that as much here as in some other books. There are some great characters, particularly Big Louis.

Interesting to see that Maigret takes the law into his own hands yet again, which is becoming quite a theme in this series, but this time doesn't let the killer get away.