a Maigret triple play: The Carter of La Providence, The Late Monsieur Gallet, and The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien, by Georges Simenon

9780141393469
Penguin, 2014
originally published as Le Charretier de la Providence, 1931
translated by David Coward
152 pp
also translated as Lock 14, Maigret Meets a Milord, The Crime at Lock 14
paperback

Sometimes when I've finished a book and have all the relevant information in my head, I can't help but to feel sorry for the villain, and that's certainly the case in this second novel in Simenon's Maigret series. This one is set along France's Canal latéral à la Marne,

from French Waterways

where two kilometers from Dizy stands Lock 14 and the nearby Café de la Marine, where "the rhythm of life ... was slow. " For a few days, life here is interrupted when something strange happens.   A body has been discovered by a carter on waking up and getting his horse ready for the day's work.  As he is moving his hand around under the straw to find his whip, next to where he'd been sleeping, he feels something "cold," and the dead woman is revealed in the light of his lantern. This discovery, we're told, is "about to bring chaos to Dizy and disrupt life on the canal."  And that it does, as Maigret takes the case, beginning with the mystery of how she got there since there was no road, and since anyone who walked there would have found him/herself knee deep in mud.  The woman's shoes are clean and there are no traces of mud on her dress; in fact she's dressed more for a night out on the town. One mystery is cleared up after yacht owner British Sir Walter Lampson identifies her as his wife, but knowing who she is doesn't answer all of Maigret's questions. It has the opposite effect, actually. 

Once again, we find ourselves steeped in atmosphere from the beginning -- rain, gloom, mud and life on the river.  Set against Lampson's yacht, the canal is filled with barges, some motorized, while some, like La Providence depend on horses and their carter to get them through.  And while Maigret follows the details of the case, it will once again be his knowledge of human nature that will solve it.  

this photo  is on the Barrow in England, but you get the idea

The Carter of La Providence is a slow burner, with a number of potential suspects and motives, but as I said, once the case was solved, I couldn't help but feel sorry for the murderer, and I think it would take someone with a heart of stone to feel otherwise.

***

9780141393377

Penguin, 2013

originally published as M. Gallet décédé, 1931

translated by Anthea Bell

155 pp

paperback

"Peace, for heaven's sake, that's what he was waiting for."

Moving on to book number three, The Late Monsieur Gallet is completely different from its two Maigret predecessors, but as in the case of The Carter of La Providence, Simenon managed once again to worm his way under my skin and right into my empathy zone. I am beginning to believe that this man must have been one of the keenest observers of human nature ever, something that becomes quite obvious here as the story unfolds, layer by layer by layer. 

Left pretty much on his own on 27 June 1930, Maigret receives a telegram informing him that a commercial traveler by the name of Émile Gallet was murdered two days earlier at the Hotel de la Loire in Sancerre. His home address was also given, and it's there that Maigret has his first exposure to the dead man in a photo. That picture, along with another photograph of the dead man's son, will come to haunt him over the course of this case, which begins with his premonition that it  "had all the hallmarks of a particularly distasteful investigation."  And as things turn out, he was right. Aside from the photos that will replay in his mind, when Gallet's widow at her home in Saint-Fargeau is told that her husband was killed in Sancerre, she produces a postcard from Rouen dated the day after Gallet was dead, proving in her mind that Maigret is wrong. Accompanying him to Sancerre, Mme. Gallet is annoyed that she's likely off on a wild-goose chase, but changes her tune when indeed it turns out to be her husband.  Then, when Maigret talks to a local inspector, he discovers that whenever the dead man stayed at the Hotel de la Loire, he'd registered as a M. Clément from Orleans.  Thus begins the strangest investigation to date in this series, which will expose much more than a murderer.  

Georges Simenon with Commissaire Marcel Guillame, his inspiration for Maigret, from France Today

When all is said and done, this book turns out to be a bit of a gut-wrenching sort of experience as Simenon basically lays bare some of the ugliness of which humans are capable;  it also, in my opinion, begins to bring out the very human (as opposed to strictly investigator) side of Maigret not yet seen in the two books prior to this one.  That trend continues to grow in the last of the books under scrutiny here, The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien,

9780141393452

Penguin, 2014

originally published as Le Pendu de Saint-Pholien, 1931

translated by Linda Coverdale

138 pp

which has also been translated as The Crime of Inspector Maigret, which, incidentally, is the first chapter heading.  Following a "shabby traveller" from France to Bremen, Maigret and his quarry have arrived at the Gare de Neuschanz at the German border, along the northern edge of Holland.  There, the man sets down his cheap suitcase, leaving it alone for two minutes. During his absence, Maigret swaps it with an exact replica that he'd picked up earlier, and the two men board the train for Bremen. He tails the man as he buys two sausage rolls (small detail but it bugs Maigret throughout the story) and then makes his way into a "poorer neighborhood," where he takes a room in a "seedy-looking" hotel.  Maigret, of course, is in a connecting room, where he puts his eye to the keyhole and watches as the man opens his suitcase, realizes that the contents are missing and goes into panic mode; he also follows as the distraught man makes his way back to the station to check for his lost bag. At around midnight, the two return to the hotel where Maigret once again peers through the keyhole, only to see the poor man put a gun in his mouth and shoot himself.  As the local police arrive, Maigret informs them that it is suicide, that the man's French, and that he would like their permission to investigate privately while they do so officially.  Maigret returns to Paris, where he 

"...was not far from -- indeed quite close to -- thinking that he had just killed a man."

And to top it all off, it was

"A man he didn't know! He knew nothing about him! There was no proof whatsoever that he was wanted by the law."

This is the point where the story begins, going back first to Brussels where it all began a day earlier,  then moving ahead as Maigret tries to find out exactly why  Louis Jeunet would take his own life. His investigation takes him into the past and into a dark secret that people will kill for rather than have it come to light.

The notions of guilt and justice are writ large throughout this novel, and  I can't help but feel that Maigret's involvement -- his need to see the case through to its end -- after Jeunet's suicide is his own way of trying to assuage the guilt he feels over his role in the man's death. However, that's just one facet of the role guilt plays in this novel.  As for justice, well, that becomes obvious along the way  and once again, as in M. Gallet, Maigret's understanding of human nature and his ability to move away from the job and into his conscience serves him well here as he has to make a decision that could change a number of lives.

It would be a grave mistake to read the Maigret novels as just another set of police procedurals or to think that Simenon is the male equivalent of Agatha Christie.  No.  These books move straight to the heart of human nature, and as I said earlier, Simenon is a master of observation.  I have seventy-one novels to go and by god I'm going to read them all.

Pietr the Latvian, by Georges Simenon -- the very first Maigret novel and it's a good one.

9780141392738
Penguin Classics, 2013
first published in serial as Pietr-le-Letton, 1930
translated by David Bellos
162 pp

paperback

"Inside every wrong-doer and crook there lives a human being."

Due to the nature of his job, my husband travels a lot, and that's the time I watch foreign television.  Normally at my house TV comes on about 7:30 pm and goes off about 10:30, but when the spouse is away, viewing time has been known to start much earlier and sometimes last until the sun comes up the next day.  Over the last few weeks of his intermittently being gone, I've slowly been watching the French-language production of Maigret on MHz, starring Bruno Cremer in the title role; on  arriving at season two, I decided that I really need to read these books.

I'm no stranger to Simenon's work, but the Maigret books have just been sitting here gathering dust for eons. Most of them are the old Penguin versions from way back when, but I'm slowly replacing those with the Penguin Classics editions for my home library.  

Bruno Cremer, who in my opinion is Maigret

Pietr the Latvian is the first of several (and I do mean several) books in this series, written over forty-plus years of Simenon's life.  As the novel opens, the Detective Chief Inspector has learned that an internationally-known, "Extremely clever and dangerous" criminal known as Pietr the Latvian is on his way to Paris on board the Étoile du Nord.  At the station as the passengers begin to depart, Maigret lies eyes on his quarry, whose physical traits he's memorized carefully.  At that moment, there's a flurry of excitement, and it turns out that there's been a body found  in Carriage 5 of the train. To Maigret's surprise, the body turns out to be that of  the man Maigret's been waiting for -- none other than Pietr the Latvian.  Or is it?   This is where the case begins, one that will become even more enigmatic before it is solved.

It's here that we begin to understand Maigret and his methods.  He is relentless to a fault as he dogs his quarry through the streets of Paris in the pouring rain, and he employs all the current tools of the profession.  But there's more to police methodology at play here -- Maigret also uses his head.  He's developed what he calls his "theory of the crack in the wall:"

"Inside every wrong-doer and crook there lives a human being. In addition, of course, there is an opponent in a game, and it's the player that the police are inclined to see. As a rule, that's what they go after." 

But Maigret has learned to bide his time, because

"...what he sought, what he waited and watched out for, was the crack in the wall. In other words, the instant when the human being comes out from behind the opponent."

In this case, that patience and particular ability will serve him well, but along the way to that "instant" he will undergo a lot of inner turmoil as things get to the point where it becomes, as Maigret says, "between them and me."

While being an armchair detective is fun here because of the puzzler Simenon gives us, more importantly my attention was drawn to the final chapters where all is unraveled.  Even then, it's not so much the solution -- instead I noticed that what comes out of these last few pages is the very stuff of his excellent romans durs, in which, as John Banville noted in the New York Review of Books in 2015:

"... a man who has spent his life in servitude to family, work, society, suddenly lays down his burden -- 'Lord, how tired he was now!' -- and determines to live for the moment, and for himself, in full acceptance of the existential peril his decision will expose him to."

What that "existential peril" is in this book I won't say.  However, while many readers may see Pietr the Latvian, or for that matter any of the Maigret mysteries as yet just another police procedural, it goes well beyond that into examining just what it is underneath someone's exterior self that leads him or her to do what they do. In short -- I get the feeling that as I travel through the Maigret mysteries, I'll find myself in the mind of a policeman  who genuinely understands human nature, and that's a place I want to be.

Once again, anyone considering reading this book should be aware of the times in which this book was written because there is some definite racial/ethnic stereotyping being done here, but I can definitely recommend the novel to crime readers of all sorts.

crime fiction from Belgium

The Strangers in the House, by Georges Simenon

9781590171943
NYRB Classics, 2006
originally published 1940 as Les inconnus dans la maison
translated by Geoffrey Sainsbury
194 pp

paperback

I'm somewhat reluctant to post about The Strangers in the House as a crime novel per se, because really, the crime that occurs and its aftermath is actually sort of the catalyst that sparks a man into action here.  It is another of Simenon's romans durs, and if anyone wants to know where the departure point between his commercial novels (think Maigret) and his "hard novels" lies, we can turn to Simenon himself for the answer. In 2012, Open Letters Monthly ran an article noting that

"the difference between the two ... was 'Exactly the same difference that exists between the painting of a painter and the sketch he will make for his pleasure or for his friends to study something.' " 

He  romans durs, he says, he didn't see as "commercial in nature," and he "felt no need to make concessions to morality or popular taste."  When he was writing one of his "commercial" novels, as he told the Paris Review in 1955, he "didn't think about that novel except in the hours of writing it," whereas with the romans durs, as he said,

"I don't see anybody, I don't speak to anybody, I don't take a phone call -- I just live like a monk. All the day I am one of my characters. I feel what he feels."

Most crime readers are very much into plot but in these novels, it's more the psychological/existentialist  aspects of the characters that takes center stage, and unless I'm at a point where I need fluff,  that, of course, is the draw for me as a reader no matter which genre I read.  The Strangers in the House highlights this distinction -- the story opens with a crime, there is an arrest, a trial and an aftermath, but it centers on lawyer Hector Loursat, 48, who for about 18 years after his wife had left him, has been living as a rather lethargic recluse in a small French town with his daughter Nicole, now 20.  And while a number of his acquaintances had over the years  invited him out for dinner or bridge, he remained alone, preferring his own company. His cousin told him that he couldn't possibly spend the rest of his life as a "hermit," but Loursat disagrees, and from then on

"He proceeded to prove that he could, and he had kept it up for eighteen years, eighteen years during which he had needed neither a wife, nor a mistress, nor a friend."

He and his daughter have been virtual strangers her entire life, with Nicole's upbringing having been put into the hands of one of the "domestics."  Lousart has during this time followed a regular routine -- several bottles of burgundy, followed by time spent reading in his study or his bedroom, and quiet dinners with his daughter where neither made any attempt at conversation.

Things begin to change one cold winter night when a sound like the crack of a whip wakes him up.  It seems to have come  from one of the rooms in his own home, and curious, he decides to have a look around. He runs into his daughter and tells her that there must be a burglar in the house, and notices that there's a light on somewhere on the third floor.  She tells him it must be the maid, but he doesn't think so -- and continuing upstairs, he realizes that this was

 "the first time in years he had departed from his own narrow and strictly prescribed orbit."

Further investigation yields the discovery of a man on a bed who's been shot and then dies "at the exact moment" Loursat walks in. He phones the prosecutor, telling him that the situation is "really tiresome," wanting him to come over and sort things out. He has no idea "who it is or how he got here," but he soon comes to realize that in this big rambling house, Nicole has been leading her own life, having her friends over for parties and dancing in the attic, and he never had a clue at any time that any of this was going on. It dawns on him that one of these people must have been the murderer, a fact that fascinates him, but he's more amazed by the fact that there's a world he's known nothing about going on under the roof of his own home and more importantly, right under his very nose. This is the earlier-mentioned catalyst that makes him aware that "he'd never tried to live -- not in the ordinary sense of the word," but more importantly, the fact that these people have actually been "living" makes him aware  that he hasn't been.

There's much, much more, of course, but I'll leave it all for anyone who may be interested in reading this novel.  While The Strangers in the House has a few minor flaws plotwise,  they're pretty irrelevant  -- this book is very much character driven and doesn't really revolve so much on plot details.  Simenon has again given us a book that oozes atmosphere, setting and above all, a look at what PD James in her intro (which I strongly advise avoiding until the end) calls "the secret underground of the human heart," and Simenon's understanding of  (as James also observes)

 "the salient facts which bring alive a character or a place, inducing the reader to contribute his own imagination to that of the writer so that more is conveyed than is written." 

While I enjoyed his The Engagement much more, I can most certainly recommend The Strangers in the House to people who, like me, are much more into a book to discover what he/she can about human nature.  This one definitely speaks volumes.


ps - there is also a film (1967) made from this book with James Mason, but I'm so pressed for time right now that it will have to wait (if I can even find it!).