The Madman of Bergerac by Georges Simenon

A jolly, bedridden Maigret

The Madman of Bergerac is the 16th book in Georges Simenon’s series of Inspector Maigret detective novels. It was first published in 1932 as Le Fou de Bergerac. Traveling by train to visit his friend Leduc, who lives in the Dordogne region of southwestern France, Maigret spends the night in a sleeping car. He has trouble sleeping, partially due to the man in the berth above him, who won’t stop fidgeting and intermittently sobs. The stranger descends from his compartment, and Maigret sees him jump from the moving train. Without really knowing why—driven by a detective’s instinct I suppose—Maigret jumps off the train in pursuit. When the mystery man discovers he’s being followed, he fires a shot at Maigret, wounding him in the shoulder.

Maigret wakes up in a hospital in Bergerac, a small city in the Dordogne. He is soon moved to a hotel on the town square, where he receives outpatient medical treatment, as well as the loving care of Madame Maigret. Maigret spends the rest of the novel in bed, but still manages to conduct an investigation into the man who shot him. In addition, a serial killer is afoot in Bergerac. Two women were strangled to death and stabbed post mortem in the heart by some kind of needle-like instrument. From his bed, Maigret meets and questions various citizens of Bergerac. Despite being confined to his hotel room, he is able to form a picture of the town and uncover some of the hidden secrets of its citizens.

Although Sherlock Holmes or C. Auguste Dupin sometimes solved crimes without ever leaving their chairs, an immobile Maigret is an oddity in the series. His bedridden convalescence leads to a lot of second-hand action. Important events take place “offstage,” and Maigret and the reader only find out about them through indirect accounts. Also unusual is how uncharacteristically jolly Maigret is throughout this book. He seems to be having the time of his life solving crimes from his bed. He enjoys tormenting the suspects and making them squirm. The phrase “madman of Bergerac” is coined to refer to the killer, but some of the mystified Bergeraciens sometimes wonder if Maigret himself might have a screw or two loose.

I got hooked on this novel from the get-go, and it held my rapt attention for the first several chapters. I found the ending a little disappointing, however. In pursuing the case, Maigret is more interested in the private lives of his adversaries rather than the fact that people have been murdered, which is treated almost as an afterthought. As usual, Simenon has developed a compelling back story for his characters, a family drama drawn with psychological authenticity. It seems to me, however, that I’ve seen elements of this conclusion in other Maigret novels (Repetition between books, of course, would depend on the order in which you read them, which in my case has been kind of random). Also, the ending seems to materialize out of thin air. Simenon doesn’t leave a lot of bread comes for the reader to follow. There doesn’t seem to be much cause and effect between investigative work and final revelations. The bed-bound Maigret just seems somewhat omniscient.

Though The Madman of Bergerac is not the best Maigret, any Maigret is good Maigret. Compared to the consistent quality of the Maigret books, this one falls a little short, but it’s still better than the vast majority of detective fiction out there.

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

Hard-boiled carnage with no one to care about

Red Harvest, published in 1929, is the debut novel by Dashiell Hammett, who would soon after author The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, which both became classic American films. Hammett is the author most associated with the genre of American noir crime and detective fiction, with the possible exception of Raymond Chandler, who came along a decade later. Red Harvest may very well be the inaugural novel in that genre. France’s leading noir author, Georges Simenon, didn’t start cranking out books until a year later.

Red Harvest is narrated by an unnamed agent of the San Francisco office of the Continental Detective Agency. He is engaged by a client—Donald Wilsson, a newspaper editor—to come out to Personville, a mining town so rough it’s nicknamed Poisonville. It’s a city of 40,000 people, and judging by this novel, most of them are criminals. The exact location of Personville is never specified, but it seems to be roughly in the vicinity of where Utah, Nevada, and Idaho meet. When the operative arrives in Personville, he finds that his client has been murdered, before the two could even meet to discuss why the detective’s services were needed. As he looks into Wilsson’s untimely demise, the detective discovers a network of organized crime and corruption. He decides to clean up this rat’s nest, and he finds another client who will pay him to do it.

This novel is about as hard-boiled as they come, and for that I admire it. Most gangster stories from the pulp fiction era read as watered-down or phony compared to Red Harvest. In this novel, if a killer wants to kill somebody, he’ll actually kill them (or try to); he won’t talk their ear off before shooting at them. There is a refreshing realism to the book’s utter lack of morality or restraint. Criminals act like criminals.

The problem with that approach, however, is that there is no one or nothing to really care about in this novel. The hero has no name and very little personality. The only woman in the book is a greedy, sleazy whore. The villains are all nondescript thugs who differ in name only. Hammett constructs this very complex web of intrigue in which all these characters blackmail, double-cross, or rat on each other. It’s all very confusing, and the reader doesn’t care enough to want to figure it all out. Never at any time did I understand why the detective was pursuing all these criminals. He has no reasonable motivation. There’s some money involved, but it’s treated almost as an afterthought. What does he really get out of this, other than the triumph of good over evil, law over corruption, which is totally antithetical to everything that happens in the book?

Red Harvest has never been formally adapted into film. A film noir version might have been more successful than the book, since some charismatic actors might actually convince you to care about these characters. One can easily see Humphrey Bogart or John Garfield in the lead. Red Harvest was likely one of the influences behind Akira Kurosawa’s samurai film Yojimbo, which in turn set the template for many subsequent gangster thrillers, from Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars to Walter Hill’s Last Man Standing. The latter film is the one that most obviously resembles the novel. It takes place in the 1920s in a Western town (but Texas), the Bruce Willis character very much resembles Hammett’s nameless detective, and the plot consists mostly of gratuitous mayhem and violence. Both that film and this novel have a direct-to-video feel about them. If this genre is your jam, however, then by all means read Red Harvest. For better or worse, it’s the Homer’s Odyssey of hard-boiled crime fiction.

The Complete Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, Part II: 1840–1843

Finding his stride, but still all over the map

This is the second of three posts reviewing the complete short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Part I covered his career from 1832 to 1839. Part II looks at his stories published from 1840 through 1843. In this second batch of stories, Poe definitely shows improvement from his writings of the 1830s. Most noticeably, he no longer feels the need to fill his stories with gratuitous references to classical literature, romantic poetry, and untranslated quotes in various languages—at least not in his horror and mystery stories, which seem aimed at an intelligent general public. His humorous stories, however, still come across as pretentious, as if he were trying hard to show off his erudition. His comedic efforts are also not very funny, at least not 150+ years after the fact, anyway.

In the early 1840s, Poe wrote several of his best-known stories, tales that most readers would consider “classic Poe.” In his pioneering mystery story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Poe introduces the detective C. Auguste Dupin, an influential precursor to Sherlock Holmes and many other literary sleuths. Dupin makes a second appearance in “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.” While “Rue Morgue” is a near-perfect classic, “Marie Rogêt” is merely good and suffers from a lack of conclusion. In the horror department, Poe made great strides with landmark offerings “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Black Cat,” “A Descent into the Maelstrom,” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.” Upon rereading, the latter story feels a bit overrated—a Rube-Goldberg torture scenario that pulls its punches in the end—but the rest have held up well and deserve their acclaim as masterworks of the genre. “The Oval Portrait” and “The Colloquy of Monos and Una” are not great, but at least they’re in the right ballpark. “The Gold-Bug,” another of Poe’s best, is more of an adventure story in the same vein as many of Jules Verne’s adventures.

Outside of those genres for which he’s known, Poe is less successful. Humor stories like “Never Bet the Devil Your Head” and “Three Sundays in a Week” are lackluster comedic offerings in which Poe spends the entire story pointing out the absurdity of an idiom. “The Island of the Fay” is an inconsequential brief involving faeries. “The Man in the Crowd” consists of descriptive street scenes that never really lead anywhere. “The Landscape Garden” is not really a story at all but rather an essay on what makes a good garden.

Overall, this bunch of stories is better than his earlier work, but still the overall effect of Poe’s oeuvre is less than impressive. In reading his complete works, I’ve learned that one would be better off avoiding his humorous stories, which only serve to lessen one’s assessment of Poe as a writer. It would serve one better to look for a collection with a title such as Tales of Mystery and Terror, which is likely to contain most of his stories worth reading. Still, I’m going to stick it out for the last third of his career and will report back when I’ve finished.

Stories in this collection

Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling

The Business Man

The Man of the Crowd

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

A Descent into the Maelström

The Island of the Fay

The Colloquy of Monos and Una

Never Bet the Devil Your Head

Eleonora

Three Sundays in a Week

The Oval Portrait

The Masque of the Red Death

The Landscape Garden

The Mystery of Marie Rogêt

The Pit and the Pendulum

The Tell-Tale Heart

The Gold-Bug

The Black Cat

Diddling

The Mystery of Marie Rogêt by Edgar Allan Poe

A long story but only half a mystery

“The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” is a sequel to Edgar Allan Poe’s better-known mystery “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Both stories feature the Parisian detective C. Auguste Dupin. Both “Rue Morgue” and “Marie Rogêet” are generally classified as short stories, but the latter—the longest of Poe’s “short” stories—is probably lengthy enough to be called a novella. “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” was originally serialized in three issues of the magazine Snowden’s Ladies’ Companion in late 1842 and early 1843.

Marie Rogêt is a beautiful young working woman—what the French would call a grisette—who is well-known and well-liked in her neighborhood. One morning she leaves her home, stating that she’s going to visit her aunt nearby. She never arrives at her aunt’s house, however, and instead goes missing. A few days later her body is found floating in the Seine, showing signs of struggle indicating that she was murdered. Poe based this on the real-life murder of a Mary Rogers that happened in New York. There’s nothing wrong with how Poe uses the facts of the Rogers case as the basis for his fiction. He writes, however, as if he expects the reader to know all about Mary Rogers and the details of her case, in the same way that a writer of today might expect everyone in America to know about the Nicole Brown Simpson murder.

This story really makes it obvious that Dupin was an influential precursor to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Much like Holmes, Dupin is a master of deduction. His cases are narrated by his best friend who is also his roommate, much like Dr. Watson. The two are hanging out in their apartment when they are consulted by a police detective, “G,” who asks for their help—shades of Inspector Lestrade. Then the detective and his friend consult the newspaper accounts of the crime, and they have half the case figured out before they ever even venture out of their sitting room. This is the plot framework of “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” and it became the template for the majority of Holmes and Watson stories.

The deductive reasoning that Poe writes for Dupin in this story is impressively ingenious. One wonders how he even thought up some of these details. The way Dupin analyzes the accounts of the case and infers details about the crime would be commendable for a mystery written today; for a mystery written way back at the dawn of the genre, it’s rather stunning. This is a fantastic detective story up until the ending, or rather the lack of an ending. Whereas Holmes and Watson eventually get off the couch and go after the killer, here the reader is robbed of that satisfaction. The resolution of the case happens “off-camera,” so to speak, and the read never really gets to know who the killer is. How utterly disappointing! While Poe may have been a pioneer of the detective fiction genre, he still had some kinks to work out in his narrative approach.

Conan Doyle, of course, added a great deal to the mystery genre. Holmes and Watson certainly have more vivid personalities than Dupin and his unnamed narrator, who could just as well be soulless computers. Based on “Rue Morgue” and “Marie Rogêt,” however, one wonders what a marvelous series of mysteries Poe could have written if he had made a career out of it like Conan Doyle did. Dupin makes a third and final appearance in “The Purloined Letter” (1844).   

The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton

Too ridiculous to succeed on any of its many levels

The Man Who Was Thursday, a novel by English author G. K. Chesterton, was published in 1908. In the (fictional) London suburb of Saffron Park, two would-be anarchist poets, Gregory and Syme, engage in a snarky debate about anarchy and poetry, in which they essentially accuse each other of being posers. Gregory reveals that he is indeed a true anarchist, and he invites Syme to a meeting of his underground terrorist cell, complete with a basement full of bombs. Syme, in turn, reveals that he is an undercover police detective from Scotland Yard assigned to a special counterterrorist task force designed to thwart the anarchists’ nefarious schemes. As the meeting proceeds, Syme meets the high council of this anarchist ring. Its seven members bear code names drawn from the days of the week: Sunday, Monday, Thursday, etc—hence the title.

Gregory and Syme, the anarchist and the detective, give each other their “word” that they won’t blow the other’s cover or turn the other in to their respective organizations. This is one of those absurd plot twists that Victorian British authors like to work into their stories in order to show off how clever they are and because they’re obsessed with what constitutes a “gentleman.” In reality, an anarchist, in dealing with a mortal enemy, would not consider himself bound by some conventional moral code, and a detective, hopefully, would take the possible loss of thousands of lives more seriously than any adherence to some “gentlemen’s agreement.”

This early plot element is just the start of many instances of ostentatious cleverness that remove the narrative from any semblance of reality. Some scenes in the book are clearly meant to be comical, but overall I’m pretty sure Chesterton intended this to be a suspenseful thriller. Though the novel is subtitled “A Nightmare,” however, it’s so far removed from realism that one can’t take it seriously enough to feel any fear, shock, or thrills from it. In the final two chapters of the book, Chesterton goes in an entirely different direction, abandoning the detective story altogether in favor of a more surreal scenario that seems intended to be profound. There are obvious allusions to God, Satan, Christ, and other Christian imagery, but how it all fits together is a puzzle to me. I don’t feel too bad about not knowing what’s going on, however, because the characters in the novel never know what’s going on either. Something else to note is that there really are no female characters in this book because women apparently don’t factor into Chesterton’s grand Christian-English-gentleman view of the universe.

In summation, The Man Who Was Thursday ostensibly begins as a mystery/thriller about terrorism, but it fails to deliver any thrills. For a while, it ventures into comedy (intentionally or not), but then it ultimately results in some kind of allegory of religious mysticism. It’s quite possible I’m just too lazy to figure this book out, but then again I have little desire to do so when I know the answer is just going to be some Christian sermon. If that’s what Chesterton wants to write about, he shouldn’t dress it up as a detective story. Some literary authorities—Kingsley Amis, Jorge Luis Borges, Michael Dirda—praised this book to high heaven, but I really ended up hating it. It’s just a pretentious and pointless waste of time.

The Devil’s Paw by E. Phillips Oppenheim

World War I spy plot with anti-Red sermonizing

E. Phillips Oppenheim (1866–1946) was a very successful author of fiction involving espionage, intrigue, mystery, and crime. From 1887 to 1943, he published over 100 novels. The Great Impersonation (1920) is generally regarded as his best work. Other than that, I couldn’t tell you which of his books are supposed to be good or bad. When I’m in the mood for some Oppenheim, I just pick one at random, based on title. The Devil’s Paw, also published in 1920, is the ninth Oppenheim novel that I’ve read thus far.

Two friends sit before the fire in a hunting cottage near the coast of Norfolk, England. The owner of said cottage is Miles Furley, a parliamentary representative for the Labor Party. Julian Orden is a wealthy aristocrat who lives at his parents’ palatial estate nearby. Mommy and Daddy Orden host a who’s who of aristocrats at their mansion. Among the frequent house guests is the current Prime Minister of England. The year is 1917 or 1918. World War I is underway, and the Americans have joined the fight. Part of Furley’s wartime duties as a coastal landowner is to patrol the shoreline looking for suspicious activity. This evening, however, he injures his leg and asks Orden to cover his shift. While making his rounds on the beach, Orden spies a mysterious figure picking up a canister from the surf, presumably containing a message from a German submarine. Before he can make a move to intercept the spy, however, Orden is struck on the head and knocked unconscious. The next day, he finds evidence that one of his parents’ party guests, a beautiful Russian woman, may be involved in the treasonous act he witnessed on the beach. 

I’ve never been blown away by an Oppenheim novel, but I generally find them moderately entertaining. I wanted to like The Devil’s Paw, but this story kept letting me down. The plot here involves socialists. Rather than proletariats, however, most of the would-be radicals depicted here are wealthy, paternalistic socialists. Oppenheim isn’t really interested in people who work for a living. He thinks that aristocrats are the only people worth writing about, and the only people capable of running the world. Here he pays lip service to the cause of socialism and labor, but one never really gets the feeling that his heart is in it. Orden, the hero of the novel, was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and just happens to dabble in labor politics. The villain is the guy who wears shabby clothes and doesn’t like opera. The result is a jingoistic propaganda piece in which socialism is portrayed as a scam and pacifism is portrayed as evil.

Although this book was published between the two World Wars, Oppenheim’s fiction is still very much stuck in the Victorian Era of the 1880s or ‘90s. One annoying convention from that age is the idea that women can commit no evil. In Oppenheim’s world, the most heinous crime a man can commit is treason, but if the perpetrator is a beautiful, upper-class female, the gentlemanly thing to do is look the other way. (Of course, if she’s of the servant class, she could be shot or hanged for espionage, no problem.) Oppenheim also tries hard to create some sexual tension between his male and female leads, but that’s awfully hard to do when his characters and intended audience are stuck in an idealized gentility wherein you can’t even kiss someone without being willing to back it up with a wedding ring.

If you know anything about history, you know how the spy plot is going to turn out. Oppenheim can’t change the outcome of the Great War. Thus, the only possible thrills would have to come from having the characters threatened with peril. There’s surprisingly little danger in this thriller, however. It mostly reads like a series of political debates, the outcome of which is a foregone conclusion, given Oppenheim’s monarchical bent. Oppenheim should’ve stuck to writing novels about the rich and powerful and left the socialists out of it. He’s clearly out of his element here.

The Misty Harbour by Georges Simenon

Maigret on the Waterfront

The Misty Harbour, published in 1932, is the 15th novel in Georges Simenon’s series of Inspector Maigret mystery novels and the 30th book from that series that I have read and reviewed so far. The book’s original French title is Les port des brumes, and it has also been published in English under varying configurations of Death of a Harbor Master. The Maigret books are consistently good but not always excellent. The Misty Harbour is one of the better ones. This mystery grabs you from page one and keeps you gripped until the very end.

As the title indicates, The Misty Harbour takes place in a fog-bound seaside town: Ouistreham on the coast of Calvados, Normandy. This town serves as the seaport to the city of Caen, to which it is connected via a canal. In Paris, where Maigret serves as the superintendant of the Police Judiciaire, a John Doe is found wandering the streets. He has no memory of his identity, appears to have suffered some brain damage, and has lost the power of speech. The man has a gunshot wound to his cranium that appears to have received some medical attention. The Paris police send out newspaper articles to help ascertain the mystery man’s identity. His housekeeper responds, identifying him as Yves Joris, the harbor master at Ouistreham. She has no idea what happened to him or why he’s in Paris. Maigret accompanies Joris and the housekeeper on the train back to Ouistreham to investigate the cause of the harbor master’s injury. Shortly after arriving in the coastal town, Joris drops dead, apparently murdered by poison.

In Ouistreham, social life revolves around the waterfront tavern la Buvette de la Marine. Maigret makes several visits to the establishment to toss back a few beers with the local inhabitants and find out what they know, but nobody’s talking. The population of the town consists mostly of sailors and other working men who make their living from the sea. Many of them speak the Breton language. These men make frequent trips to England, the Netherlands, or Norway to ship goods to and from Caen. A few upper-class inhabitants, who have made their fortunes in the shipping industry, also have homes in Ouistreham. Among these is the town’s mayor, Monsieur Grandmaison, a particularly prickly character who seems to have something to hide. He repeatedly butts heads with Maigret and challenges the inspector’s authority.

Having read so many Maigret novels, I’ve gotten to the point where I can sometimes foresee where Simenon’s mystery plots are going, but this case was sufficiently perplexing that I couldn’t figure out what was going on until all is revealed in the final chapter. Atypical of Maigret novels, this one sports a few action scenes, violence included, in which Maigret gives and takes blows with the rough and tumble sailors of Ouistreham. Sailors and bargemen are frequently featured in Maigret novels. Simenon clearly has an affinity for those who live and work at sea or on the canals of France, as seen in such novels as Lock 14, The Grand Banks Café, The Flemish House, Maigret and the Headless Corpse, and Maigret and the Bum. One of the joys of reading the Maigret books is learning about different aspects of life in France, and The Misty Harbour provides a vivid glimpse into the maritime lifestyle on the Norman coast in the 1930s. In all respects, The Misty Harbour is an exceptional example of Simenon’s and Maigret’s work, one well worth reading for fans or newcomers to the series.

The Flemish House by Georges Simenon

Ho-hum Maigret mystery

The Flemish House, first published in 1932, is the 14th book in Georges Simenon’s series of Inspector Maigret detective novels. Though the most recent paperback edition from Penguin Books is called The Flemish House, all previous editions were titled The Flemish Shop. The original French title is Chez les Flamands.

Maigret is invited to look into a case in Givet, a town on the border between France and Belgium, along the Meuse River. A friend of a friend, Anna Peeters, asks Maigret to help clear her family name. A young woman named Germaine Piedboeuf has gone missing. It is known that she has an illegitimate child by Anna’s brother Joseph, who is engaged to marry another woman. The locals feel that the Peeters family killed Germaine to get rid of her and any claims she may have on Joseph. Anna Peeters argues that there is no hard evidence connecting her family to the woman’s disappearance. They are merely the victims of prejudice based on nationality and class.

In this border town, animosity and resentment exist between the French and Flemish residents, which, here on the French side of the border, amplifies the locals’ dislike of the Peeters family. The Peeterses run a successful grocery store/bar serving mostly Flemish customers, and as a result they are relatively well-to-do, financially. The Piedboeufs, on the other hand, are a family of working-class factory employees, so Joseph Peeters’s seduction of Germaine leaves a bad taste of the rich man exploiting the poor girl. All this fuel added to the fire contributes to Anna Peeters turning to Maigret for help in clearing this matter up.

Beyond the mystery, these Maigret novels are often enjoyable for what Simenon shows us of French life of the time period in question. The River Meuse is a thoroughfare for barge traffic, and Givet one of its more popular stops, so Simenon once again gives some glimpses into the lives of the bargemen and families who ply this trade. Canal life is also covered in Lock 14, Maigret and the Headless Corpse, and Maigret and the Bum. In The Flemish House, the Meuse is “in spate,” with high flooding and strong currents that have halted any boat traffic and left the barges stranded along the riverbanks. The depiction of Givet is similar to that of other provincial towns in Maigret novels (The Grand Banks Café, for example). The majority of the residents are shown as close-minded conspiracy theorists. The Belgian border adds a touch of uniqueness to this novel, as the reader gets an inkling of insight into Flemish culture through the daily lives of the Peeters family in their home and shop.

Upon finishing the book, I really have no idea how Maigret solved this case. He just kind of hangs out with the suspects until he gets a feel for them. There’s no case-cracking clue that tips the scales in his favor. The reader can make an educated guess as to who may have committed the crime, and in the end it seems like that’s just what Maigret does. The solution is neither obvious nor surprising. When the perpetrator is revealed, the reader just feels apathy. Habitual readers of Maigret novels know that the inspector always solves his case, but he doesn’t always subject the culprits to the full extent of legal justice. Sometimes he makes a moral judgment that the crime was justified or committed under extenuating circumstances, and he cuts the criminal a break. In this case, however, it is difficult to understand why Maigret would exercise leniency to the extent that he does. The Flemish House failed to capture my attention the way most Maigret mysteries do. This is just an average mystery novel, and a below-average book for Simenon.

A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler

The Citizen Kane of spy novels

Eric Ambler (1909-1998) is a highly respected British author of spy novels whose career spanned almost half a century. A Coffin for Dimitrios, often regarded as his finest work, was published in 1939. The book has also been published as The Mask of Dimitrios, which is the title of the 1944 film adaptation starring Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet.

Englishman Charles Latimer is a former professor of political economy turned successful writer of mystery novels. While vacationing in Istanbul he meets a Colonel Haki of the Turkish police, who happens to be a fan of his work. As the two get to talking, Haki tells Latimer about an infamous criminal named Dimitrios whose body was discovered in the Bosporus Strait. Given Latimer’s interest in crime and detective work, Haki asks Latimer if he’d like to go to the morgue to view the body. Latimer agrees. The more the writer learns about Dimitrios’s criminal career, the more intrigued he becomes. He decides to investigate Dimitrios’s past, with the idea that he might discover something that would be useful for a future novel. Latimer retraces Dimitrios’s known whereabouts, traveling from city to city looking through police records and interviewing people with some knowledge of the notorious criminal. Along the way, Latimer finds that someone else has been following the same trail and making similar inquiries into Dimitrios’s past.

The plot of the book calls to mind the classic film Citizen Kane in that the title character is dead in the opening scene, and the rest of the book is a series of glimpses into his past. Through his investigation of Dimitrios’s life, Latimer uncovers a history of espionage, drug dealing, human trafficking, and murder. These crimes are revealed almost as a series of short stories, told to Latimer by various law enforcement personnel and unsavory characters. Ambler ties these fictional flashbacks into real-life political intrigue of Europe’s interwar period. The drawback to this series of flashbacks, however, is that Latimer is never really in any danger until at least two-thirds of the way through the book. He’s not really doing any ingenious detective work, either, but rather just listening to stories that are voluntarily related to him.

There are two kinds of spy thrillers. One includes those of the highly skilled, expertly trained, killing-machine sort of hero (e.g. James Bond, Jason Bourne). The other is that of the regular guy who accidentally gets involved in an espionage plot (e.g. just about every Alfred Hitchcock movie). A Coffin for Dimitrios falls into the latter category. The problem with the regular-guy approach, however, is that if you’re regular guy is too regular, he ends up being just boring. Such is the case with Latimer, who doesn’t have much of a personality at all. He is also still somewhat bound by the literary conventions of the English gentleman, which means he’s predictably going to do the right thing. It would be interesting to see what an author like Georges Simenon could have done with this premise by adding some ungentlemanly moral ambiguity.

Overall, however, I enjoyed this novel enough to make me want to read some more of Ambler’s work. This is an intelligent, realistic espionage thriller in the vein of John Le Carré’s work. It’s not simplistic potboiler pulp fiction, but it reads very briskly and lively and doesn’t get bogged down in too much political details (unlike, perhaps, some of Le Carré’s work). If you like those old Hitchcockian thrillers of the ‘40s and ‘50s, there’s a good chance you’ll like this.

The Shadow Puppet by Georges Simenon

Only murder in the building

First published in 1912, The Shadow Puppet is the twelfth novel in Belgian author Georges Simenon’s series of mystery novels starring Parisian police detective Jules Maigret. The original French title of this novel is L’Ombre chinoise, meaning literally “the Chinese shadow,” which refers to a certain type of shadow puppet. This novel has also been published in English under the titles of Maigret Mystified and The Shadow in the Courtyard, the latter title being the most accurate. If this were a Hardy Boys mystery, the story would actually involve a shadow puppet, but here the title is strictly metaphorical, referring to a human silhouette viewed through a window shade.

A concierge at an apartment building on the Place des Vosges calls the police to report a murder, and Maigret reports to the scene of the crime. Passing through an arched entryway, he enters the large courtyard of this apartment complex. On one side of this courtyard resides the laboratory of a serum manufacturer (medical elixirs, I presume). The owner of the company, Monsieur Couchet, has been found seated at his desk, shot to death, and his safe emptied of its contents, estimated to be 360,000 francs. Couchet, a very wealthy man, doesn’t actually reside in this building, but through an unfortunate coincidence, his ex-wife does. Both have remarried since their divorce. Couchet also had a mistress, not much of a secret, for whom Maigret develops a sympathy. Although on the surface this crime appears to be a typical armed robbery killing, Maigret comes to suspect that the murder may have been committed by one of the building’s residents. As he delves into the case, he uncovers the secret lives of these tenants and their tangled web of relationships.

The fact that an industrial pharmaceutical laboratory would exist on the ground floor of an apartment building is one of those little historical details that makes Maigret novels interesting. From reading these mysteries, you learn a lot about what life was like in Paris, and France at large, in the early twentieth century. The reader gets to see aspects of Parisian life they’d never find in a tourism brochure. One facet of French society that Simenon often addresses in these novels is class consciousness and social status. In The Shadow Puppet, differences in financial status—between the rich Couchets in their mansion on Boulevard Haussmann, the middle-class tenants of the apartment block at the Place des Vosges, and the hard-up mistress and her peers living in Montmarte—play an important part in the story. As usual, Simenon goes beyond mere stereotypes and caricatures to create complex characters with realistic psychological motives.

I became very involved with the lives of these characters; that aspect of the novel is expertly done. The mystery story itself, however, is not one of the most artfully constructed puzzles in Maigret’s casebook. To set up this unusual web of relationships between the characters, Simenon had to rely on maybe one too many coincidences. It is a little hard to believe that some of these people just happened to end up as next-door neighbors to each other. This murder also suffers from a shortage of viable suspects, leading to a conclusion that’s not unforeseen, though there are some creative revelations in the details of the crime. As always, this Maigret novel is a compelling read, thoroughly entertaining, but would it make a top-ten list of Maigret books? Probably not.  

The Dancer at the Gai-Moulin by Georges Simenon

Guest-starring Maigret

Published in 1931, La Danseuse du Gai-Moulin is the tenth novel in George Simenon’s series of Inspector Maigret mystery novels. In English the novel has appeared as Maigret at the “Gai-Moulin” or The Dancer at the Gai-Moulin. The title references the name of a nightclub in Liège, Belgium, the city of Simenon’s birth, where this novel takes place. Even though Maigret works for the Paris police, his investigations sometimes lead him farther afield, jurisdiction be damned.

Two teenage boys are hanging out at the Gai-Moulin one evening. René Delfosse, 18 years of age, is the wealthy child of a factory owner and somewhat of a juvenile delinquent. Jean Chabot, 16, is a poor boy, generally well-intentioned, who has fallen in with the wrong kind of friend. Both of them are enamored with Adèle, a dancer at the Gai-Moulin. She is friendly towards them, but treats them like pets and doesn’t put out for them. On this particular evening, Adèle can’t spend too much time chatting with the boys because she has to pay attention to a real big spender. This stranger has a Turkish look about him, which results in him being frequently referred to as “the Turk,” whether accurate or not. Unbeknownst to Adèle, Delfosse and Chabot have not come to the Gai-Moulin merely to drink cocktails. Their intention is to rob the place. They hide in the basement until after closing, then enter the bar to empty the till. Before they can do so, however, they find the body of the Turk dead on the bar floor.

By now, you might be asking yourself, “What does all this have to do with Maigret?” The odd thing about this Maigret novel is that Maigret himself doesn’t even appear until halfway through the book. Even then, he largely confines himself to the sidelines while the Liège police do all of the leg work. The absence of the book’s star for much of the novel’s length seems an odd choice on the part of Simenon, but I guess when you write around 500 novels you can afford to experiment. This book kept calling to my mind Arthur Conan Doyle’s book The Valley of Fear, a Sherlock Holmes mystery in which Sherlock Holmes barely plays a supporting role. That Doyle book, in my opinion, was definitely a failed experiment, but this Maigret novel fares a little better with the absentee detective strategy. The final chapter of the novel, in which Maigret does his thing, is really very good as Simenon rolls out one of the more ingeniously intricate crime-solution plot webs in the series.

The notable absence of Maigret for much of the novel, while unexpected, does not ruin the book. I wouldn’t recommend this novel for Maigret newbies, because one learns almost nothing about the main character, but if you’re already a fan of the series then this mystery will not fail to satisfy. It’s not one of the best books in Simenon’s consistently high-quality series, but it’s better than many Maigret cases and far above average when compared to the novels of other 20th-century mystery writers.

The Inspector Maigret Novels of Georges Simenon

Keeping them all straight

From 1931 to 1972, Belgian-French author Georges Simenon published 75 novels in his Inspector Maigret series of mysteries. (There are also 28 short stories, none of which I’ve read.) The star of these books, Jules Maigret, is superintendent of the Police Judiciaire in Paris. He works out of the police headquarters on the Quai des Orfèvres, where he heads a team of detectives—Janvier, Lucas, Lapointe, and Torrence—who appear as recurring characters throughout the series. Rather unusual for a detective series born in the 1930s, Maigret is married. Madame Maigret appears in almost every book and occasionally has a major role in a case. Although his home and office are in Paris, duty often calls Maigret farther afield to locations all over France, elsewhere in Europe, and even to the United States. The variety in Maigret’s cases allows the reader glimpses into different aspects of French society: metropolitan and provincial, rich and poor, urban and rural, and various regional distinctions.

I never set out to read all these books, but I keep finding them in used book stores and library sales at very inexpensive prices. When I pick up a Maigret novel, I’m pretty sure I’m in for a good read. The worst of these novels are above average for the mystery genre, and the best of them are excellent. 

When I find a Maigret novel, however, it is often difficult to tell whether I’m buying the same book twice because the English editions have been published under so many different titles. I decided I need a checklist to keep them all straight. Below is a list of all the novels in the series. The books I’ve read and reviewed are highlighted in blue. Click on the titles to read the complete reviews.

 

Harvest/HBJ paperback editions (circa 1990s)
uncredited cover designs

1. Pietr-le-Letton (1931)
English titles: Pietr the Latvian, The Strange Case of Peter the Lett, Maigret and the Enigmatic Lett, Suite at the Majestic 

2. Le Charretier de “la Providence” (1931)
English titles: Lock 14, The Crime at Lock 14, Maigret Meets a Milord, The Carter of La Providence

3. M. Gallet décédé (1931)
English titles: The Late Monsieur Gallet, The Death of Monsieur Gallet, Maigret Stonewalled 

4. Le Pendu de Saint-Pholien (1931)
English titles: The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien, The Crime of Inspector Maigret, Maigret and the Hundred Gibbets 

5. La Tête d’un homme (1931)
English titles: A Man’s Head, A Battle of Nerves, The Patience of Maigret, Maigret’s War of Nerves 

6. Le Chien jaune (1931)
English titles: The Yellow Dog, Maigret and the Yellow Dog, Maigret and the Concarneau Murders, A Face for a Clue

7. La Nuit du carrefour (1931)
English titles: The Night at the Crossroads, The Crossroad Murders, Maigret at the Crossroads 

8. Un crime en Hollande (1931)
English titles: Maigret in Holland, A Crime in Holland 

9. Au rendez-vous des Terre-Neuvas (1931)
English titles: The Grand Banks Café, The Sailors’s Rendezvous, Maigret Answers a Plea

10. La Danseuse du Gai-Moulin (1931)
English titles: The Dancer at the Gai-Moulin, At the “Gai-Moulin”, Maigret at the “Gai-Moulin” 

11. La Guinguette à deux sous (1932)
English titles: Maigret and the Tavern by the Seine, The Guinguette by the Seine, Maigret to the Rescue, A Spot by the Seine, The Bar on the Seine, The Two-Penny Bar

12. L’Ombre chinoise (1932)
English titles: The Shadow Puppet, The Shadow in the Courtyard, Maigret Mystified

13. L’Affaire Saint-Fiacre (1932)
English titles: The Saint-Fiacre Affair, Maigret and the Countess, Maigret Goes Home, Maigret on Home Ground

14. Chez les Flamands (1932)
English titles: The Flemish House, The Flemish Shop, Maigret and the Flemish Shop

15. Le Port des brumes (1932)
English titles: The Misty Harbour, Death of a Harbor Master, Maigret and the Death of a Harbor Master

16. Le Fou de Bergerac (1932)
English titles: The Madman of Bergerac

17. Liberty Bar (1932)
English titles: Liberty Bar, Maigret on the Riviera

18. L’Écluse no. 1 (1933)
English titles: Lock No. 1, The Lock at Charenton, Maigret Sits it Out

19. Maigret (1934)
English titles: Maigret Returns, Maigret

20. Les Caves du Majestic (1942)
English titles: The Hotel Majestic, Maigret and the Hotel Majestic, The Cellars of the Majestic

21. La Maison du juge (1942)
English titles: Maigret in Exile, The Judge’s House

22. Cécile est morte (1942)
English titles: Cécile is Dead, Maigret and the Spinster

23. Signé Picpus (1944)
English titles: Maigret and the Fortuneteller; To Any Lengths; Signed, Picpus

24. Félicie est là (1944)
English titles: Félicie, Maigret and the Toy Village

25. L’Inspecteur Cadavre (1944)
English titles: Maigret’s Rival, Inspector Cadaver

26. Maigret se fâche (1947)
English titles: Maigret Gets Angry, Maigret in Retirement

27. Maigret à New York (1947)
English titles: Inspector Maigret in New York’s Underworld, Maigret in New York

28. Les vacances de Maigret (1948)
English titles: Maigret’s Holiday, A Summer Holiday, No Vacation for Maigret

29. Maigret et son mort (1948)
English titles: Maigret’s Dead Man, Maigret’s Special Murder

30. La première enquête de Maigret (1949)
English titles: Maigret’s First Case

31. Mon ami Maigret (1949)
English titles: My Friend Maigret, The Methods of Maigret

32. Maigret chez le coroner (1949)
English titles: Maigret at the Coroner’s, Maigret and the Coroner

33. Maigret et la vieille dame (1949)
English titles: Maigret and the Old Lady

34. L’Amie de Mme. Maigret (1950)
English titles: Madam Maigret’s Friend, Madam Maigret’s Own Case, The Friend of Madame Maigret

35. Les Mémoires de Maigret (1951)
English titles: Maigret’s Memoirs

36. Maigret au “Picratt’s” (1951)
English titles: Maigret in Montmartre, Inspector Maigret and the Strangled Stripper, Maigret at Picratt’s

37. Maigret en meublé (1951)
English titles: Maigret Takes a Room

38. Maigret et la grande perche (1951)
English titles: Maigret and the Tall Woman, Maigret and the Burglar’s Wife

 

Harvest/HBJ paperback editions (circa 1980s)
Bob Silverman cover designs

39. Maigret, Lognan et les gangsters (1952)
English titles: Maigret, Lognon and the Gangsters; Inspector Maigret and the Killers; Maigret and the Gangsters

40. Le Revolver de Maigret (1952)
English titles: Maigret’s Revolver

41. Maigret et l’homme du banc (1953)
English titles: Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard, Maigret and the Man on the Bench, The Man on the Boulevard

42. Maigret a peur (1953)
English titles: Maigret Afraid, Maigret is Afraid

43. Maigret se trompe (1953)
English titles: Maigret’s Mistake

44. Maigret à l’école (1954)
English titles: Maigret Goes to School

45. Maigret et la jeune morte (1954)
English titles: Maigret and the Dead Girl, Maigret and the Young Girl

46. Maigret chez le ministre (1954)
English titles: Maigret and the Calame Report, Maigret and the Minister

47. Maigret et le corps sans tête (1955)
English titles: Maigret and the Headless Corpse

48. Maigret tend un piège (1955)
English titles: Maigret Sets a Trap

49. Un échec de Maigret (1956)
English titles: Maigret’s Failure

50. Maigret s’amuse (1957)
English titles: Maigret’s Little Joke, Maigret Amuses Himself, None of Maigret’s Business

51. Maigret voyage (1958)
English titles: Maigret Travels, Maigret and the Millionaires 

52. Les Scrupules de Maigret (1958)
English titles: Maigret Has Scruples, Maigret’s Doubts

53. Maigret et les témoins récalcitrants (1959)
English titles: Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses

54. Une confidence de Maigret (1959)
English titles: Maigret Has Doubts, Maigret’s Secret

55. Maigret aux assises (1960)
English titles: Maigret in Court

56. Maigret et les vieillards (1960)
English titles: Maigret and the Old People, Maigret in Society

57. Maigret et le voleur paresseux (1961)
English titles: Maigret and the Lazy Burglar, Maigret and the Idle Burglar

58. Maigret et les braves gens (1962)
English titles: Maigret and the Good People of Montparnasse, Maigret and the Black Sheep 

59. Maigret et le client du samedi (1962)
English titles: Maigret and the Saturday Caller

60. Maigret et le clochard (1963)
English titles: Maigret and the Bum, Maigret and the Dosser, Maigret and the Tramp

61. La Colère de Maigret (1963)
English titles: Maigret’s Anger, Maigret Loses His Temper 

62. Maigret et le fantôme (1964)
English titles: Maigret and the Ghost, Maigret and the Apparition 

63. Maigret se défend (1964)
English titles: Maigret Defends Himself, Maigret on the Defensive

64. La Patience de Maigret (1965)
English titles: Maigret’s Patience, Maigret Bides His Time, The Patience of Maigret

65. Maigret et l’affaire Nahour (1966)
English titles: Maigret and the Nahour Case

66. Le Voleur de Maigret (1967)
English titles: Maigret’s Pickpocket, Maigret and the Pickpocket 

67. Maigret à Vichy (1968)
English titles: Maigret in Vichy, Maigret Takes the Waters

68. Maigret hésite (1968)
English titles: Maigret Hesitates

69. L’Ami d’enfance de Maigret (1968)
English titles: Maigret’s Childhood Friend, Maigret’s Boyhood Friend

70. Maigret et le tueur (1969)
English titles: Maigret and the Killer

71. Maigret et le marchand de vin (1970)
English titles: Maigret and the Wine Merchant

72. La Folle de Maigret (1970)
English titles: Maigret’s Madwoman, Maigret and the Madwoman

73. Maigret et l’homme tout seul (1971)
English titles: Maigret and the Loner

74. Maigret et l’indicateur (1971)
English titles: Maigret and the Informer, Maigret and the Flea

75. Maigret et Monsieur Charles (1972)
English titles: Maigret and Monsieur Charles

 

Penguin paperback editions (2013 to present)
Alceu Chiesorin Nunes cover designs