A Man's Head, by Georges Simenon

read in January.



The story goes that when Georges Simenon  approached Arthème Fayard publishers to pitch his first detective novels, the reaction he got wasn't what he'd hoped for.  As quoted in Lucille Becker's Georges Simenon: 'Maigrets' and the 'romans durs' (Haus Publishing, 2006),  they came back with

"It's not a detective novel! It's not a real puzzle! It's not a chess game; it isn't even a good novel because there are neither good nor bad people, there is no love story, and it almost always ends badly ... [Furthermore], your detective is nondescript and not particularly intelligent. You see him seated for hours in front of a glass of beer! He is painfully ordinary!" (41)

The reality is that Simenon's Maigret is quite intelligent.   He sits. He observes. He drinks a lot of beer while doing both. He lets a roomful of suspects get on each others' nerves until the actual criminal reaches a breaking point.  He listens. He makes his way into people's heads so that he can empathize, sympathize and learn what makes them tick, something he manages to do not just with criminals but with everyone concerned.  Reading through what readers have to say about him, the inevitable comparison with Poirot or Holmes comes up a number of times, mostly when readers have been disappointed with the Maigret novel they've just read.   I don't really read crime fiction solely for plot or action; I could also care less if there's a love story involved, unless it's relevant to the evildoing.   I'm like Maigret -- I'm far more interested in the  motivating factors that speak to the why.  

9780141393513
Penguin, 2014
originally published 1931
translated by David Coward
169 pp
paperback

"It was a war of nerves."

The days are numbered for the prisoner in cell number 11 at the Santé Prison,  and he can't believe his luck when on October 15 he is able to walk out of his cell and onto the streets of Paris.  Actually, someone had left this convicted double murderer a note three days earlier, letting him know that his door will be left open, and that the guards' attention will be focused elsewhere.  The note also contained instructions that he was to follow in making his way out of the prison.  What Joseph Heurtin didn't know was that Maigret and the police were not only watching his every move, but had set up his escape.   Maigret himself had arrested him, but wasn't completely convinced that he was guilty.  As he had said to the examining magistrate, "That man is either mad or he's innocent," and decided he would prove it via an "experiment" to be "morally sure;" he also believes that once out on the streets, Heurtin will lead him to the real culprit since he is sure that the convicted man was not alone at the time of the crime.  A man's head is at stake, and  Maigret has ten days; once Heurtin walks out of the prison, the clock is ticking.   

Maigret has no idea of what he's let himself in for when he finds himself going head-to-head with an adversary whose disturbed psychology and "dangerously sharp intellect" seems tailor made for Maigret's method of getting into his opponents' heads, giving the title of this novel a definite double meaning.  Little by little, with some measure of imaginary nail biting I waited  for that moment when, with Maigret's help, the bad guy would crack and the "war of nerves" could finally come to an end; only then did I realize how much tension I was holding inside.  While some readers found the lack of action to be an issue, the telling flat  and in some instances "boring," I found myself so caught up in it that I needed to finish the novel with no interruptions.  What happens in  A Man's Head  so nicely highlights, as Scott Bradfield so aptly describes it in a 2015 essay for The New York Times, that Maigret "rarely solves crimes; instead he solves people,"  which is precisely why I read and love these books.  

Very much recommended for people who are more all about the whys in their crime reading.  

*****

from imdb

I recently watched the 1933 film based on this book via the Criterion Channel,   La tête d'un homme directed by Julien Duvivier, and let me just say that anyone who found the book a bit on the dull side would not say the same thing about the film, which as one imdb reviewer  noted the director had turned into "something approaching a Gothic horror tale."   Holy crap -- that's a great description of it, for sure.    I was a bit taken aback at the beginning when the entire crime that put Heurtin in prison played out in full instead of unraveling little by little as was the case in the novel, but it worked and worked extremely well, since there's much more of a sense as to the disturbing psychological makeup  of Maigret's adversary from the outset.  This character is so creepy that the same imdb reviewer noted about the actor who portrays him, "With him on screen, one could even describe the screen itself as haunted."  Also a great description, and beyond apt.

from La Serie Maigret

If you prefer, you can catch the French Maigret series episode based on the novel on MHz, starring Bruno Crémer, my favorite Maigret.   The TV version  offers a version that is more subdued and sticks closely to the novel.

both are terrific.