review of
Georges Simenon's A Maigret Trio: Maigret's Failure; Maigret in Society; Maigret and the Lazy Burglar — Three novels published in the United States for the first time
- tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 6, 2019

I'm sure I've run across mention of Simenon for decades but I admit to not ever caring very much. It wasn't until I read Ariel S. Winter's The Twenty-Year Death (see my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2960541888 ) & deduced that the 1st 3rd of that was meant as an homage to Simenon that I finally got interested. Hence, when the opportunity to get some of his bks at a dramatically reduced proce appeared I was on it. So what was I on about?

The hero, Maigret, is a police detective. I suppose these stories cd be accurately called "police procedurals". Maigret isn't a deranged homicidal maniac, he's not drinking whiskey constantly & getting the shit kicked out of him or kicking the shit out of other people. The investigations proceed patiently & logically. He's married, his wife doesn't get kidnapped so the kidnapper can threaten Maigret. Instead, he goes home to her, they go out, their domestic life is more or less placid. These stories were mostly not melodramatic or brutal. I enjoyed them but for someone who thrives on Jim Thompson & James Ellroy they might seem.. lacking. Hell, they might even be close to realistic. One of the 1st things I liked about it was a weather description. I must be getting (c)old.

"At eleven o'clock in the morning, the murky light of a hangman's dawn still lay over the offices; the lamps were still burning at noon, and dusk came down at three o'clock. One could no longer say it was raining; one was actually living in a cloud, with water everywhere, trails of it on the floors, and no one able to utter three words without blowing his nose.

"The papers carried photos of suburban dwellers going home by boat along streets that had turned into watercourses." - p 9

The scene is already set, the mystery evoked: WHOSE NOSE IS BEING BLOWN?

After learning about the victim, Maigret starts have to sympathy for the murderer.

"'You're doing all you possibly can, aren't you?'

"He certainly was ! And yet he'd never felt so little eagerness to find a murderer. True, he was curious to know who had at last decided to get rid of Fumal, which of these men and women had had enough of it and risked everything at one throw. But would he blame the criminal? Wouldn't he feel a pang at heart when the handcuffs were put on?" - p 48

Well, you didn't learn shit from that review, did you?

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Let's try the 2nd bk, maybe I'll have something substantial to say about that one. Let's start w/ the set-up, shall we?

"'"A skilled psychiatrist, using his scientific knowledge and the experience gained in his consulting-room, is in a fairly good position to understand his fellow human beings. But it is possible, especially if he allows himself to be influenced by theories, that he will understand them less perfectly than a good schoolmaster, a novelist or a detective."'" - pp 105-106

This one has a frustrated love story of the most exaggerated & painful sort.

"'For fifty years, then, they wrote to each other practically every day, and one day your uncle spoke to you about a marriage which was to take place in a more or less distant future. Which means, I suppose, that he and Isabelle were waiting for the Prince to die in order to get married.'" - p 127

This involved producing a child to perpetuate a bloodline name.

"The priest had shared the Prince's opinion. One could not, for a question of love, allow a name to die out which, for the past five centuries, had been found on every page of the history of France.

"'I understood where my duty lay . . .'

"The sacrifice had taken place, since a child, Philippe, had been born. She announced the birth too, and on this subject there was a phrase which gave Maigret pause :

"'Thank God, it is a boy . . .'" - p 133

Philippe, now a grown married man, is interrogated by Maigret to whom he reveals an indiscrete subject.

"[']In any case, whenever I come to Paris, I am in the habit of spending an hour or two with a pretty woman. As I don't want to have any consequences or to complicate my life, I content myself with . . .'

"He made a vague gesture.

"'On the Champs-Elysées?' asked Maigret.

"'I wouldn't say this in front of my wife, who wouldn't understand. In her opinion, outside a certain society . . .'" - p 166

No one Maigret interviews seems to be lying.

"'He went and had dinner in a restaurant in the Rue de Seine where he nearly always had his meals. I checked up on that.'

"Another one who had not been lying ! It was a queer profession, thought Maigret, in which you felt disappointed that somebody hadn't commited murder ! Yet this was the case here, and the chief-inspector, despite himself, felt a grudge against each of these people in turn for being innocent or appearing so." - p 171

Maybe this is a large part of what makes these Maigret stories interesting. Instead of the typical thriller where the reader is sucked in by the dramatic monstrosity of the crime & the 'need' for the heinous criminal to be caught, there're more subtle things at play.

"Maigret rushed across to the archway, climbed the stone steps, with a Lapointe who was at once calm and astonished.

"'What's up, Chief ?'

"'Where is she ?'

"'In her room.'

"'When did you last hear her moving around ?'

"'Just now.'

"'Whom were you phoning ?'

"'I was trying to get through to you.'

"'What for ?'

"'She's getting dressed to go out and I wanted ask you for instructions.'

"Maigret felt ridiculous in front of Lapointe and Janvier who had joined them. In contrast to the anxiety of the last few minutes, the flat was quieter than ever." - pp 180-181

A false alarm, the human mind jumping to a false conclusion.

Well, you didn't learn shit from that review, either, did you? — but at least I didn't spoil it for you.

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Let's try the last bk, maybe I'll at least further illustrate my opinions about Simenon's gentle & subtle touch. In this one, Maigret is forced into navigating a new bureaucracy that he doesn't approve of & that inhibits his investigating.

"'I don't know if I'm right to telephone you . . . I informed my immediate superior, the superintendent at my own station, right away. He told me to ring the Public Prosecutor's office and I spoke to the official on night duty there . . .'" - p 202

"So now 'they' were forcing the police to play tricks ! By 'they' he meant the Public Prosecutor's Department, the crowd at the Ministry of the Interior—the whole bunch of college-educated law-givers who had taken it into their heads to run the world according to their own little ideas.

"They looked on the police force as a minor, slightly discreditable cog in the wheel of Justice with a capital J—one to regard with suspicion, to watch out for, to keep in its place.

"Like Janvier, Lucas and a score or so of Maigret's men, Fumel was the old-fashioned kind; but the others had adjusted themselves to the new methods and rules—all they thought of was passing exams so as to get quicker promotion." - pp 202-203

"The place was being reorganized, as they called it. Well-educated, gentlemanly young fellows, scions of the best French families, were sitting in quiet offices, studying the whole thing in the interests of efficiency. Their learned cogitations were producing unpractical plans that found expression in a weekly batch of new regulations.

"To begin with, the police were now declared to be an instrument at the service of justice. A mere instrument. And an instrument has no brain.

"It was now the examining magistrate in his office and the Public Prosecutor in his awe-inspiring headquarters who directed investigations and gave orders." - p 209

"That's what things had come to. What interested the gentlemen in high places was to put a stop to the series of attacks that were causing losses to banks, insurance companies and the Post Office. They also considered that car thefts were becoming too frequent.

"'What about giving more protection to the cashiers?' he had expostulated. 'Why leave one man, or a couple of men, to convey millions of francs by a route that anyone can find out beforehand?'

"Too expensive, of course !" - p 214

In other words, it's all about class, as usual — wch is partially why he cares about the victim in this one, a murdered burglar he knew from having arrested him before.

"'He was a solider the way another man might be a fitter or a cobbler,' said his lieutenant.

"He went through three years without a single punishment. Whereupon, for no known reason, he deserted, and was discovered after a few days in a workshop in Algiers, where he had found a job.

"He offered no explanation of his abrupt departure, which might have got him into considerable trouble, beyond a muttered :

"'I couldn't stand it any longer.'

"'Why not?'

"'I don't know.'" - p 220

Maigret becomes increasingly aggravated by the new bureaucracy's lack of concern for anything other than bigger money interests & their dismissal of the sufferings of poorer people.

"Monsieur Kernavel, of the Public Prosecutor's Department" [..] "believes the man to have been killed in an underworld vendetta.

"'What did you say?'

"The stock phrase 'underworld vendetta' infuriated Maigret, for it meant that from the official standpoint the matter was as good as closed. As one of the Public Prosecutor's men used to say :

"'Let 'em kill one another, down to the last man. That'll save the hangman trouble and the taxpayers money.'" - p 235

It also won't happen that way, will it? Instead, the most murderous gangsters will monopolize their power as much as possible & become 'good citizens'.

In my review notes I call the following a "typical complicating Simenon detail":

"His wife declared that she simply could not understand what had happened, and Maigret believed her.

"'I don't see why he should have done such a thing, Superintendent. We were so happy. It's only just two years since we bought this flat. Joseph was earning good wages. He doesn't drink and he hardly ever went out by himself.'" - p 240

Instead of sitting at his desk in his private detective's office knocking back whiskey only to be interrupted by a platinum blond who lures him into deadly peril w/ lies & more lies, as might be the case in other detective fiction, Maigret's situation is more bourgeois & 'ordinary'.

"He sat down to dinner with no suspicion that a telephone call was soon to summon him from the rather cloying tranquility of his flat, that a considerable number of people who were at present making plans for the evening were destined to spend the night otherwise than they had intended, or that every building in the Quai des Orfèvres would be lit up until morning, as only happened on nights when there was a great to-do." - p 261

In the end, in keeping w/ the class struggle, the rich get away w/ murder.

"'What will happen, in your opinion?'

"Maigret, eager to bring the conversation to an end, replied laconically :

"'Nothing !' and hung up. He needed sleep. And he felt almost certain he was right." - p 288 ( )

Maigret's Failure ★ ★ ★

An Englishwoman on Holiday ups & disappears and a childhood neighbor & bully, Fumel, comes to Maigret insisting that someone is out to murder him and demands protection. Fumel, a butcher who is much hated as an employer, business man, and husband (as was his father). Everyone who has any dealing w/ Fumel has reason to kill him. In order to prove the threat real, Fumel writes anonymous letters to himself!

Maigret is more or less forced by the "higher Ups" to take Fumel's case. The same night as a policeman is assigned to watch over Fumel, he is murdered in his own home/office, thus the conceived "failure".

Maigret in Society ★ ★ ★

A well to do & much respected man is found dead in his home from a close range gunshot wound to the head, and four lesser wounds fired after the head wound killed him. Le Monsieur, has had a long term affair of heart via correspondence w/ the wife of Prince de___V. The Prince himself has died a few days prior and now the two are free to marry.

There seems to be no one who wanted Le Monsieur dead.... that is the mystery. Maigret goes about interviewing everyone close to Le Monsieur and comes up w/ a startling discovery & confession from the Housekeeper.

Maigret and the Lazy Burglar ★ ★ ★ ★

I liked the mystery in this much better than the others. Maigret was more active, there were more interesting goings-on, there were more interesting characters and I liked the two separate mysteries.

A man is found dead in the Bois du Bologne, his skull fractured and his face bashed in, yet by his tattoo he is recognized by Maigret as a burglar he had known for many years.... One who had perfected his method & gone up in the world of living. This not not Maigret's jurisdiction, but because he knew the victim he becomes involved unraveling his death, as the Head Office wants to sweep the murder under the rug as that of a "Gang" killing.

At the same time Maigret has his hands full w/ a very clever robber who is robbing post offices..... Here he gets a lucky break when an off-duty policeman is caught in the midst of a robbery and illegally shoots one of the robbers.....

Following the procedural here was very interesting and it held my interest. I liked Maigret's actions & processes. I felt I had more invested in the outcome of this mystery than the other two. ( )

מגרה הוא הבלש היחיד שאני אוהב לקרוא אולי בגלל ההימעות מדפוסים קובעים ואולי בגלל שהעללה מתרחשת בפריז וכל עמוד אוכלים או שותים דבר מה. ( )