Maigret

I have read a few Maigret books a long time ago. There were none on my shelves until I bought this one.

I am Simenon’s target reader. He said his Maigret novels were designed to be read by people of average education in a single sitting. It is his third Maigret story, published in 1931 as  Le pendu de St Pholien. By the time this translation was published in 1963 the title had changed to Maigret and the hundred gibbets. My Penguin is small enough to fit into a coat pocket and I read more than half on the tube yesterday. His style, so far as I can see in translation, is lucid, the story intriguing, and to my surprise it is highly autobiographical. If you are going to read it, do not read further because the next paragraph is a spoiler. In 1919 Simenon was sixteen.

”In June 1919 Simenon had been introduced into a group of young artists and bohemians that called itself “Le Caque” (herring barrel). The group met at night to drink, discuss art and philosophy, and experiment with drugs such as morphine and cocaine. In early 1922 one of the members of the group, Joseph Kleine, hanged himself at the doors of the St Pholien church of Liège after a night of excess with Le Caque. Simenon was one of the last people to see Kleine alive and was deeply affected by his suicide, later referring to the incident in Les trois crimes de mes amis and Le pendu de St Pholien (The Hanged Man of Saint Pholien).” (Wikipedia)

He wrote seventy-five Maigret novels and twenty-five short stories as well as other more serious novels under his own and other names. The one I have just read reminds me of Sherlock Holmes; a mysterious plot and, another spoiler, the guilty go free as happens from time to time in the Sherlock Holmes canon. The short stories are my bedtime reading and are most enjoyable even if I half-remember the plots. I have ordered another early Maigret to read on a tube/train journey.