Book Review: Maigret and the Good People of Montparnasse (1962) by Georges Simenon and translated by Ros Schwartz #1962Club

Unlike my first and second picks for Karen and Simon’s #1962Club which I had decided on quite soon, the third (that’s the number I can reasonably aim for) took some consideration, with the book I finally ended up with being an almost last-minute substitute. I had decided on reading Dead Cert by Dick Francis since I haven’t read one of his for long but search as I did through my bookshelves, I found all sorts of Francis books but not this one—it is there, somewhere. The Summer Birds by Penelope Farmer appealed to me, but I didn’t have a copy and while it was listed on Open Library, availability was a little dicey. It was then that I thought of Simenon—I have been wanting to read Inspector Maigret for a long long time now, and can report that I have finally (and happily) now managed to, with Maigret and the Good People of Montparnasse (1962).    

Also published as Maigret and the Black Sheep, Maigret and the Good People of Montparnasse is the fifty-eighth of the Inspector Maigret mysteries by the very prolific Belgian writer Georges Simenon with close to 400 novels, various volumes of autobiography and memoirs and numerous short stories to his credit. And this was a series Goodreads reviews assured me didn’t necessarily need to be read in order, which made it the perfect pick. And it turned out one I enjoyed very much indeed.

In the book, Maigret and Madame Maigret have returned from an unusual three-week long vacation spent at their cottage, spent mostly doing up the house and pottering about the garden—unusual for not one call has disturbed them in this period, no urgent summons to return to work or solve a murder. And now back in Paris for five days, they are trying to ease back into daily life, but things seem far from ‘ordinary’—Paris is still in vacation mode, most people away (their friends, people at the office, later even neighbours of the murder victim), even the summer ‘refusing to die’—bringing in perhaps a sense of ennui. Thus as our story opens, Maigret is rather pleased to receive a phone call at a little past 2 in the night, from a colleague Saint-Hubert who calls him to the site of a murder. M. Rene Josselin, a respectable businessman known to Saint-Hubert has been found dead in his chair at home. His wife and married daughter were out watching a play, and his son-in-law Dr. Fabre, a paediatrician had been called away to see a patient, a call that turned out to be false—a deliberate ploy?

But other than the phone call, there is really no other clue in the matter. The Josselins were respectable, good people—with no enemies, no bad blood with any one or bad habits, no one with any reason to want to do away with any of them. The room where Josselin was murdered itself, as Maigret notes

was not only elegant and comfortable, it exuded peace and quiet family life. It was not a formal drawing room. It was a room that was pleasant to be in and where each piece of furniture had a purpose and a history.

Maigret speaks to the widow, daughter and son-in-law but none has much to say. Each have alibis and there seems no clue nor reason for the deceased to have been targeted. Even his former employees to whom M. Josselin had sold his business after he developed heart trouble are perfectly ordinary, good people, with ordinary lives and families. This profusion of normal people is needless to say frustrating for Maigret and he realises it wouldn’t take much more for him ‘to start loathing good people’. He even begins to be jealous of a colleague at work who has a much more passionate and violent murder on his hands which is resolved fairly easily. Nonetheless Maigret presses on with his team looking into every possible thread. And then a clue does emerge, but to really get to the bottom of things, much more painstaking digging is needed.

For a mystery in which not much really happens, at least for the first part of the story, and in which there are few suspects and almost no clues, this is a book that moves at a fairly fast pace from start to finish. At no point did I find myself bored or frustrated like Maigret but wanted to keep reading on to see how things pan out and what the solution to the mystery really is.

Maigret is no genius (like Holmes or even Poirot) but he is meticulous in his work ensuring with his supportive team that no possibility remains uninvestigated. He also likes to get a sense of the people and the environment he is working with himself, leading others to think that he doesn’t trust his colleagues. But

They didn’t understand that for him it was a necessity to get a sense of people’s lives, to try and put himself in their shoes.

It is thus that he picks up clues and gets an insight into motivations. While initially he finds himself not even knowing what questions to ask these perfect ordinary people, once among them for a time, he picks up on attitudes and reactions, giving him some direction to probe, even if this might be too much of an intrusion at times. And it isn’t that he does everything himself, for his team does turn up good information and in fact a major breakthough as well.

As we follow Maigret on his investigations, we get some sense of place as well—the Parisian streets, cafes, neighbourhoods—mostly of the well-to-do, but in a brief detour to Maigret’s colleague’s case, a glimpse of the slum occupied by the Polish community.

The mystery in its own way is a complex one—there are next to no suspects, no one with real motives, and nothing concrete to probe, and for us readers too, there is nothing to do but go along as Maigret uncovers information and starts to piece together things. Not a solution one can guess, but after Maigret speaks to one person a little before the denouement, one can of course put things together. As for the denouement itself, it was interesting how it played out—while Maigret calls all involved to his office, there is no Poirot like grand scene or revelation, he merely speaks to one or two to confirm what he has worked out. But the reader, and to the extent it can, the people concerned are left satisfied.

My first sojourn into the world of Simenon and Maigret turned out to be very enjoyable and good fun—different I assume from Maigret’s usual adventures—but fast paced and readable all through.  Can’t wait to get to the next one.

(p. s. The blurb I think reveals a little more than I’d have liked. Luckily I didn’t read it).