Maigret and the Loner by Georges Simenon

A gripping mystery despite the déjà vu

Belgian author Georges Simenon published 103 mysteries in his Inspector Maigret series—75 novels and 28 short stories. The novel Maigret and the Loner, originally published as Maigret et l’homme tout seul, is the third-from-the-last escapade of the Parisian police superintendent. The novel was published in 1971, and the story takes place in 1965. Though this installment comes late in Simenon’s career, he certainly hadn’t lost any of his storytelling skills. Maigret and the Loner is a gripping mystery from start to finish. It does, however, bear some striking similarities to an earlier novel in the Maigret series.

A vagrant is found murdered in a condemned building, where he had apparently been squatting for quite some time. The room is littered with a collection of useless junk that the man has amassed like a pack rat. The victim appears to have been shot in his sleep. Maigret is mystified by the motive, and also by the dead man’s appearance. Though dressed in the rags of a beggar, his face, hair, and hands have the appearance of a healthy elderly gentleman. This incongruity piques Maigret’s curiosity. Before he can catch the killer, Maigret must first establish the identity of the victim and determine what possible reason anyone could have for murdering this penniless loner.

Prior to reading Maigret and the Loner, the last Maigret novel I read was Maigret and the Bum (Maigret et le clochard, published in 1963). In both novels, Maigret investigates the murder of a homeless man. In both cases, the victim in question was neither born poor nor forced by destitution into vagrancy. Rather, both murdered tramps were successful middle-class men who left their wives and children and voluntarily chose homelessness as a lifestyle. Whether the Bum or the Loner, over the course of hunting down the killer Maigret must uncover the reason why decades earlier these men made this unusual life choice. This makes for a compelling story in both books. It still seems odd, however, that Simenon wrote two Maigret novels with this same premise. Of course, if you only read one, it’s not an issue. Having read both, I consider them both very good Maigret mysteries.

There is one plot element in Maigret and the Loner that bothered me as unrealistic. Maigret receives a tip from an anonymous caller that proves to be the clue that cracks the case. That in itself is not unusual; Maigret points out that police detectives often receive anonymous phone tips when conducting investigations. Upon receiving the call, however, Maigret quickly makes a pretty big leap in deduction to nailing down a suspect. It’s more like a leap of faith, actually, or a demonstration of extra sensory perception. That felt unrealistic compared to the rest of the novel and compared to Simenon’s work in general. On the other hand, the reader never does discover who made the anonymous call, which rings true to real life but seems oddly incomplete for a mystery story.

In the Maigret series, Simenon excels at writing police procedurals populated by characters of great psychological depth. Even an average Maigret mystery is better than most books by other authors in the genre, and Maigret and the Loner is a far better than average Maigret book. Despite a few reservations stated above, I was hooked from the first page and riveted until the very end.
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