Georges Simenon Books

Simenon wrote this book in southern France during World War II, even as the Nazis occupied his country. Later the author would be accused of collaborating with the Germans, but that seems most unlikely. Whatever the case, there is no hint that there is a political upheaval underway during the action of the short novel.

Maigret is a pure detective, careful, plodding, not a womanizer, not given to physical violence. Perhaps most remarkable about the Maigret books is the fact that they are all quite different, without the sex and violence that marks so many crime novels today.

The plot is fairly simple here. A recluse, Peg Leg, is murdered. His housekeeper, to whom Maigret feels inexplicably drawn, refuses to divulge much that is useful. And Maigret chases hither and yon for clues.

But it is the atmosphere of Paris and the village, the characters, and the writing itself that make this book worthwhile. There is no padding, no waste. In fact, it is a gem of detective fiction.

Simenon's mysteries featuring Inspector Maigret are always a bit quiet if compared to most mysteries written today. The same is true of this novella. When a reclusive man named Peg Leg is murdered in a small village only recently built, Maigret is called on to investigate. The clues lead to several parts of Paris and Rouen, involve musicians and Peg Leg's family, but Maigret keeps returning to the victim's house and Felicie, the uncooperative housekeeper/cook who refuses to tell anything and creates a world in her own mind that sometimes resembles the real one.

Being French, Simenon's stories always involve food and wine. Much of the action takes place in Pigalle in Paris where ordinary people go during the day, and dangerous people gather at night. Without any idea of why Peg Leg was killed, Maigret finds the search nearly impossible. Just when he thinks he's worn Felicie down, she backs up and becomes tight lipped again. Even the gift of a lobster for dinner has no effect. Yet, Maigret feels himself drawn to the girl for reasons he doesn't understand.

As usual, Maigret solves the case with a bit of luck and acute observation. Reluctantly he leaves the toy village and the residents who for a short while were a big part of his life. Most of all, he leaves Felicie behind, but he will never forget her.

A young man appears at Maigret's apartment and Madame Maigret telephones him. Maigret's revolver and the visitor are both gone when Maigret arrives home around noon. Maigret and his wife go to the Pardons for dinner. Dr. Pardon likes to cook. The young man is identified as Alain Lagrange. Alain is the son of one of the expected Pardon guests who, for some reason, did not attend the dinner party

In a roundabout way it is determined that Alain has become a missing person. Maigret tells Alain's sister that he is wandering around Paris with a loaded gun in his pocket. One of the officers finds that a big trunk has been transported from the Lagrange household and smells. The dead man had been a politician. Gare du Nord seems to be a feature of the case.

Maigret goes to England for the first time in twelve or thirteen years. He is following a woman named Jeanne Debul. He is beginning to lose confidence in himself as an investigator. He understands that Alain has always believed in his father, a big soft seemingly ineffectual man. Maigret locates Alain in London and they eat together in a hotel grill before catching a midnight flight back to Paris. The convoluted story pertaining to the Lagranges and Jeanne Debul and others concerned blackmail.

Madame Maigret telephones to alert her husband that a frightened young man has called at their home and will wait there to see Maigret at his midday meal. When Maigret returns home, he is an noyed to discover that his mysterious guest has left, and more disturbed that one of his prized revolvers has gone with him. Monsieur Maigret is dismayed - but hardly surprised - when a corpse turns up in a railway trunk, shot by his own gun. His search for the elusive and unidentified visitor sends Maigret across the channel to London to investigate one murder - and prevent another...

...something. Seemed like the typical story of an eastern block sociopath. Maybe I'm missing some deeper meaning. If your looking for an existentialist commentary about the vacuousness of life, you may like this.

it is a noir book, simenon is a great writer , i just wish his main character was a little more believable,you almost wish that he would have had him declared insane.... to make it more believable.

doubt only of thought. Soren Kierkegaard

Frank Friedmaier, the protagonist of Georges Simenon's novel "Dirty Snow" seems to have no doubts about his life. In fact he seems to be more a creature of base animal instinct than of anything resembling thought. If he has doubts about anything they are not evident. But his words and deeds bespeak an unconscious despair so profound that the reader can feel it with every page.

Simenon was nothing if not prolific in both his literary and public life. Born in Belgium in 1903, Simenon turned out hundreds of novels. Simenon's obsession with writing caused him to break off an affair (he was prolific in this area of his life as well) with the celebrated Josephine Baker in Paris when he could only write twelve novels in the twelve month period in which they were involved. Although perhaps best known for his Inspector Maigret detective novels, Simenon also wrote over a hundred novels that he referred to as `romans durs' (literally "hard novels"). "Dirty Snow" is one of Simenon's hard novels and to call it noir is an understatement. "Dirty Snow" is darker than noir, devoid of any light or optimism. In the hands of Simenon it is an absorbing (entertaining seems an inapt word) look at the darker side of life.

Frank Friedmaier lives in his mother's brothel in a small apartment building. The brothel is in an unnamed city in occupied France during World War II. Frank divides his time between the brothel and a local bar inhabited by an assortment of shady characters that include low level criminals, women of `easy virtue', and the occasional German soldier. When he returns home at night he camps down with whichever one of his mother's employees suits his fancy. What follows may best be described as nasty, brutish, and short. There is no affection, not even feigned affection, just feral activity.

The book follows Frank's descent into increasingly lower levels of behavior. He decides the time has come to kill a man, lies in wait in some snow that had been dirtied by the day's activities, and then takes a knife to a German soldier and stabs him to death. He reveals his presence to a passing neighbor, the father of a young girl who Frank seems to like, just so that the neighbor will know that Frank has murdered the soldier. Frank is confident that the neighbor will keep the information to himself. Frank next plans a robbery. The robbery is successful but Frank soon finds himself in a German prison subject to repeated interrogations. By the end of the book Frank has completed a journey that has taken him on a journey through what Dante would have considered different layers of hel l.

The fascinating aspect of Dirty Snow for me lay in the narration. Simenon has pulled off a neat trick here. The narrator is Frank and we are privy to his innermost thoughts, such as they are. Yet it is the absence of thought and the inability to evince any feeling in a rational manner that grabs the reader. There are sections, particularly those involving the daughter of the neighbor who witnessed the killing, where you can almost sense that Frank would like to act on a normal level with normal emotions. He may come close but he always retreats. As Dirty Snow ends, in a courtyard in the prison, Simenon has Frank perform one simple act involving an article of clothing. It is an act that Frank has long observed of the other prisoners. His instinctive performance of that act brings Franks journey and the book to its inevitable end.

Dirty Snow is a fascinating, if dark, look at one small aspect of the human condition. I found it well worth reading. L. Fleisig

Although the setting and the authorities are never identified, Frank Friedmaier and his mother operate a brothel from their apartment in a city resembling Nazi-occupied Brussels. He is a nobody, but his mother's business gives him certain privileges--food, fuel, freedom--denied to other natives of the city. Aimless, amoral, aloof, Frank embarks on an utterly senseless, sadistic crime spree. Not only is this a masterful account of life during the Occupation, it's the bleakest, most cynical example of noir you'll probably ever encounter.

Evildoers in noir novels usually have, if not a motive (money, jealousy, revenge), then at least an underlying, explicable psychological condition--something that makes them, if not likable at least empathetic. "Dirty Snow," however, is almost excruciating to read; at no point will readers find they are rooting for this squalid punk. (Nor, for that matter, are we pulling for the authorities.) Unlike such superficially winsome characters as Tom Ripley or Lou Ford ("The Killer Inside Me"), Frank commits his vile crimes for no apparent reason, except perhaps, as William Vollmann writes in a brilliant afterword, "to be recognized. He wants to be known."

Certainly his lack of a father explains Frank's obsession with his neighbor Holst, whose daughter is one of his victims. ("It would have made him so happy--it would have relieved him of such a burden--to say, "Father!") But, above all, Frank wants to be in control, in this city filled with "more and more people with eyes that were dead." Even in prison, he struggles to be the master of his jailers' capricious routines and of every dreary moment of each passing day; he clings to the vision of a woman framed by an apartment window and imagines her living in a blissful poverty with her husband, "with their child in its cradle, their bed that smelled of them." The struggle to be someone, to have a life worth noticing is the closest thing to a motive Simenon offers.

"Dirty Snow" is often compared to Camus's "The Stranger" for the utter bleakness of its atmosphere and the irrationality of Frank's behavior and to the novels of Jim Thompson or Dostoevsky for its exploration of the criminal mind. But in some ways it reminds me of Flannery O'Connor's fiction--not for any kind of off-key humor, which is virtually nonexistent in Simenon's novel, but because, by the novel's end, his antihero realizes a warped sense of redemption. Perhaps that's what he wanted all along.

The above question is asked by this edition's Afterword about the protagonist's fate. Frank Friedlander is the son of a brothel keeper in an occupied country, and a self-declared 'piece of s***'. Unable to find satisfaction in abusing his mother's whores, knifing army officers or robbing old ladies' heirlooms, the one thing he constantly craves is recognition. He's a piece of s***, so you'd better step around him. Flaunting the fruits of his crimes, it's only a matter of time before his enemies exact retribution.

The novel recalls the most brutal parts of Hammett's The Glass Key, Camus' L'Etranger and Koestler's Darkness at Noon. Part of me wonders whether that should be a recommendation.

The mystery novel becomes, in the hands of Simenon, not only a stage for characters to develop and respond to one another, but a form of social commentery as well. Magritte is a member of the working class, not living in poverty, but also not able to share in the wealth he sees others squandering. He acts with dignity, and his determined effort to solve crimes becomes inseparable from his effort to keep focused on how one should keep one's dignity, even in a corrupt society.

That he doth work with his adulterate money on the Seine." Dante. The Divine Comedy

"The Bar of the Seine" begins with a curious conversation between Inspector Maigret and a prisoner, Lenoir, sitting in a cell on death-row in a Parisian jail. Lenoir's execution has been set for dawn on the next day and for Maigret, the person responsible for the capture and conviction of the prisoner, this visit is something of a courtesy call. During their conversation Lenoir tells Maigret about an unsolved murder. The only real information he provides is that some unidentified bar on the River Seine would lead Maigret in the right direction. As Maigret takes his leave of Lenoir he does not take the train to meet his wife at their summer vacation spot. Instead, he defers his vacation and sets out to investigate.

Maigret finds the bar in short order and walks into a world where a slice of the Parisian middle-class comes for its rather tawdry summer weekends. Drinking, cards, boating on the Seine and indiscriminate bed-hopping are the order of the day. There has also been a murder and, as befits a story planted so firmly in the detective genre, Maigret brushes aside all distractions to solve the mystery handed to him by a condemned man.

Georges Simenon was the author of over 100 Inspector Maigret mystery stories. They were immensely popular in the 1930s through the 1960s. Inspector Maigret stories also appeared in film and TV version. Penguin Books has begun to reissue a set of Maigret mysteries. "The Bar on the Seine", one of Simenon's earlier Maigret stories, is a good place to start.

Simenon's writing is sparse and to the point. This is a short book, 154 rather small pages, and can be read in one or two sittings. But despite its brevity this reader felt engaged not only by the characters (Maigret in particular) but the settings. Simenon doesn't tell you what to think of any particular character nor does he engage in lengthy discussions on his protagonists' morality or character. He simply paints a very evocative picture and leaves the analysis for the reader.

Simenon's Maigret stories, although faithful to the detective story formula of his time, manages to hold up better over time for me than others. I think that what sets Simenon's Maigret stories apart from those of his contemporaries is the character of Maigret and down to earth settings of the stories. Maigret is not a character that is revealed to the reader immediately. Simenon doesn't set about to provide you with a character map to Maigret's personality in any one book. Rather, he grows on you over time. He has an innate disdain for higher authority that is appealing. Simenon's settings and other characters also add a dash to his Maigret mysteries. These are not parlor room mysteries where the reader has to determine which upper-class member of the gentry (or the butler) committed murder most foul in the library.

Anyone interested in a good story, simply told should enjoy Bar on the Seine. L. Fleisig

This is a light and an enjoyable read which I managed to digest easily in an evening sitting. I enjoyed the book and would recommend it. The book is either 4 or 5 stars. In any case, it is highly entertaining, light, perhaps what one would call beach reading.

As most know, Simenon was one of the best know mystery writers of the twentieth century, having written close to 200 novels, over 150 novellas, plus several autobiographical works. He had over 500 million books in print. He started off as a city reporter as a teenager first in Liege, then later moving to Paris. He started writing in Liege at a young age. In later years he lived and worked in Canada and in America. The Paris based Inspector Maigret is his best know series with over 100 works between 1931 and 1972. Inspector Maigret has become synonymous with great Parisian detective stories. His trademark visits to smoky Parisian bars for a few drinks are part and parcel of the reading experiences.

Without revealing the plot details in this particular mystery story, the novel "The Bar of the Seine" manages to combine crime, detective work, Paris city life, and the charm of the French countryside all in one quick and enjoyable read. It has a cast of very entertaining characters, including a wealthy coal merchant and his wife, along with his mistress and others.

The story involves a confession which leads to a trip to the countryside and then the unraveling of a complex murder mystery. The setting is far from the city. The story is set in a slightly decaying house or bar on the river among weekend guests and French recreational boaters.

Recommend: 4 stars.

Penguin has reissued Inspector Maigret mysteries in a winning new format which invites the reader to cozy up to a neat little page that is easy on the eyes. The trim size of these series permits you to pack these books easily into your pocket. They are lightweight and the type size is generous and airy. Distinctive covers, consisting of grainy black and white photos vaguely reflecting the general feel of the books' plot, and Georges Simenon's name, tipped to the left in dropout white on a black background, give all the books a branded look which marks them clearly for the potential Simenon fan.

As has already been articulated in other reviews, Simenon is a master reporter of human behavior. He makes no value judgments, nor does he provide elaborate details. He simply furnishes the facts, as gruesome or sordid as they may be. Here, middle-class fun seekers on holiday are busy committing adultery, being blackmailed, and killing people. Yet the Pernod keeps on being poured and the laughter and jolly times keep rolling. Inspector Maigret is the ballast on this cruise and keeps his eye ever focused on the mystery at hand. That mystery is revealed in the very first chapter as a condemned man archly hints at another murder which has gone unpunished. Maigret commits himself to collaring the culprits, and so the plot unwinds as Simenon the journalist succinctly and colorfully reports the action for us.

I read this book while on a business trip in India. My outrageous jet lag and sleepless nights provided ample time to finish this work and move on to others. I must admit, however, that I wasn't much in the mood for it, but then again, I spent much of my time trying to get some rest and being unable to. Probably the only book I would have wanted to read would have been a treatise on insomnia. Not Simenon's fault.

The Bar on the Seine is translated by David Watson from a 1931 book called La Guingette a Deux Sous. It has previously been translated in 1940 by Geoffrey Sainsbury, and published variously in English as Guingette by the Seine, A Spot by the Seine, and Maigret and the Tavern by the Seine.

Maigret visits a gangster who is about to be executed, and the man hints that he knew of a murderer, from 6 years before, who frequented a bar called La Guingette a Deux Sous. Maigret has little luck finding this, until he stumbles across a man who mentions his plan to visit this tavern -- a man who, Maigret learns, is also arranging as assignation with his mistress. Maigret finds his way to the tavern, where he finds the man (a successful coal merchant) with his wife, and also the man's mistress and her husband, a struggling haberdasher, and a varied cast of characters, including a talkative heavy-drinking Englishman, and several more folks. It seems the mistress is a rackety woman who has had affairs with several of the regulars at this tavern -- and that her husband has used this knowledge to blackmail some of her lovers. So it is perhaps not a surprise when the sorry blackmailer is shot -- and when his wife's latest lover, the coal merchant, is found with a gun.

The man escapes, and Maigret tries to track him down. Meanwhile the Englishman strikes up a relationship of sorts with Maigret, while at the same time all but flaunting his attempts to help the escaped coal merchant. And Maigret learns some of the details of the haberdasher's arrangements, including his involvement with a moneylender who disappeared, significantly, six years before -- just when the gangster Maigret had talked to had hinted at knowledge of a murder. Maigret is very dissatisfied with the obvious shape of the case -- something is going on. Which of course he discovers. What works -- quite brilliantly -- in this book, one of the earliest Maigrets, is the eventually displayed, quite convincing, quite sad, character of the actual murderer. Some of the early Maigrets seem uncharacteristic of the series to me -- Maigret is at times almost an action hero -- but in this case the story reads very much like later Maigret, with the main interest being the psychology of the murderer and other related figures.

As usually, this Simenon's novel is very close to painting !

I love Holland, and this novel remind me some Vermeer's (of Delft) paintings.

And the story is excellent with a lot of empathy and psychology.

A prominent French criminologist lecturing in Holland is accussed of murder. As a courtesy, the French Police send Jules Maigret in an unofficial capacity to assist in the investigation. With his usual brilliance, Maigret begins to unravel the mystery.

Simenon's Inspector Maigret is a deeply Parisian character. He is at his best, exploring the nooks and crannies of Paris. In this novel, Simenon plucks Maigret out of Paris and places him in rural Holland. Whereas, Paris is rich in seedy atmosphere, tidy Holland is its exact opposite. Maigret fans will enjoy seeng him operate in a foreign context. I would not recommend this book as the first book for Maigret novice. It is better to be first exposed to him in his element.

Bottom line is that there's just not much to this story. Weak characters, an uninteresting plot, and a lame mystery just left me flat. This is the first Maigret mystery that I have read, and to be fair maybe I just don't care for his character and that bled into my opinion of everything else. I don't know. Whatever the reason, I just didn't care for this book at all and found it to be quite dull.

I have always loved Georges Simenon's Inspector Maigret novels and stories. And as I was going to visit Holland, I decided to read MAIGRET IN HOLLAND for "atmosphere."

Simenon doesn't disappoint. A murder takes place in a small Dutch seaport. Maigret is called in, and instantly everyone's hackles are aroused by this outsider Frenchman asking questions about why a popular resident was found dead. As usual, the more Maigret casts his eyes around, the more suspects and suspicious characters come to light. The darker side of human nature emerges from the outwardly benign residents, who are embroiled in a whole complex of deadly sins involving the victim.

Was it the luscious and lubricious milkmaid? The shady character hanging around the docks? The victim's sister? widow? And what part did that hat play?

Well, so sorry, I'm not going to spoil this one for you. You'll have to read it yourself, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Today, in the small port of Delfzijl in north Holland stands a bronze statute of Inspector Maigret, commemorating this location as the literary birthplace of Georges Simenon's remarkable detective. According to local legend (which some question), Simenon wrote his first story involving Maigret, titled The Case of Peter the Lett, in 1929 while residing at Delfzijl aboard the Ostrogoth, a small barge.

Regardless, this particular story, Maigret in Holland (published 1931, first published in English in 1940), does indeed take place in Delfzijl. A visiting, pedantic French sociology professor, Jean Duclos, finds himself accused of murder. Inspector Maigret is posted from Paris to oversee the situation.

Maigret is in unfamiliar territory, one with sabots - wooden shoes, bargees - barge men, colliers - ships for transporting coal, and bollards - posts around which are fastened moorings. The community is small, close knit, and not especially welcoming to strangers, certainly not French inspectors. Unexpectedly, he almost immediately is commandeered to help with the birth of a purebred Frisian calf. Worse yet, many of the key individuals that Maigret wishes to question do not speak French!

But this is classic Maigret; he bides his time, not jumping to conclusions. He builds a case through routine police methods and astute psychological observations. As with most Maigret mysteries, the story is more about characters and psychology than the puzzle itself.

My copy of Maigret in Holland is a 1994 Harvest Book edition, translated by Geoffrey Sainsbury. It is larger than a standard paperback, about 8 inches by 5 inches.

This is a great book but one would never read it if one merely read the back cover copy which is totally inaccurate -- so inaccurate that one suspects the writer of the copy has never read the book. I have read M. Monde Vanishes many times in French (La Fuite de M. Monde) and given dozens copies of this excellent English translation to friends and acquaintances. M. Monde learns, in the course of his adventures after he flees his unhappy existence, that true freedom comes from inside -- one does not have to tear one's life apart, one can to change one's perspective. In Simenon's usual concise, brilliant style.

Norbert Monde, a fourth-generation bourgeois Parisian businessman, "comes to his senses" on the afternoon of his forty-eighth birthday, withdraws 300,000 francs from his bank account, and promptly vanishes, abandoning his second wife, gay son, and money-grubbing daughter to their own devices. He surfaces in Marseilles where he is quickly drawn into a domestic crisis at a hotel and winds up living a new life among gamblers, drunks and prostitutes in Nice. He's happy, for a while, in realizing his lifelong ambition to be nobody other than a man in the street. But when his work at a nightclub brings his first wife, Therese, into his orbit, Monsieur Monde finds himself drawn back into the world of moral responsibility. Beautifully understated and impressively human, Simenon's take on the familiar "walking out on your life" tale is one of the better examples. In its empathy for the desperation of middle-class life, and for a man whose childhood values have fed into a lifetime of limited scope, it reminded me of that slim European classic, Patrick Suskind's novella "The Pigeon".

Let's take a plane to Saint Paul.
Let's take a kayak to Quincy or Nyack,
Let's get away from it all."

I have to admit that Frank Sinatra version of "Let's Get Away From it All" kept entering my consciousness as I read George Simenon's "Monsieur Monde Vanishes". The upbeat nature of the song is not remotely like the dark, reflective tone of Simenon's story but if you have ever sat in your office on a dreary day or sat in your home on a humdrum evening and just wondered what it would be like to just walk away from your life and start fresh somewhere else then you will have some understanding and, perhaps, sympathy for a man who wakes up one morning and decides to get away from it all.

Simenon was nothing if not prolific in both his literary and public life. Born in Belgium in 1903, Simenon turned out hundreds of novels. Simenon's obsession with writing caused him to break off an affair (he was prolific in this area of his life as well) with the celebrated Josephine Baker in Paris when he could only write twelve novels in the twelve month period in which they were involved. Although perhaps best known for his Inspector Maigret detective novels, Simenon also wrote over a hundred novels that he referred to as `romans durs' (literally "hard novels"). As with many of his contemporaries such as Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books were marketed and sold as popular, almost pulp fiction. Also like Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books have stood up well over time. The New York Review of Books publishing division has reissued much of Simenon's books. They are well worth reading and "Monsieur Monde Vanishes" is an excellent place to start.

As with virtually all his protagonists in these hard stories, Monde is a stolid, middle-class member of the establishment. Based in Paris, Monde runs the family export/import business. His is a life of regular habits, from the time he wakes up, through his work day and then through the evening. He is married (a second wife) and has children. Beneath this surface regularity lies a yearning to get away, to just leave everything behind and as the book opens Monde does just that. The rest of the novel explores Monde's journey, his new identity, the places he goes (the French coast) and the people he meets. He sheds his stolid identity like someone sheds their clothing at night and finds himself in a world entirely different from the one he leaves behind. The reader witnesses this transformation in what can be best described as something of a voyeuristic fashion.

Simenon's hard novels are often referred to as psychological novels but I find that term a bit misleading. Simenon does not analyze. He does not delve deep into his protagonists' minds. He presents the reader with a slice of the human condition and lets the reader deal with the implications, the psychoanalysis if you like. They do offer glimpses into his protagonists' lives even though (or perhaps because) he does not fill in the blanks for you. His character's actions speak for themselves and what they have to say is not always pleasant. In "Monsieur Monde" we are not presented with an explanation for Monde's acts. They are simply provided to the reader. It is up to us to judge them or analyze them if we so choose. In a world of fiction filled with happiness and redemption and the ultimate triumph of good against evil, Simenon is a breath of fresh (if pessimistic) air. "Monsieur Monde" does break away from this mold a bit as I found there was a bit more `closure' (a hackneyed word to be sure but it seems suitable for use here) in "Monsieur Monde" than in some of his other works. Unlike some of his other books we see someone reclaim some of the responsibility he walked away from. However, the question that Simenon poses is a critical one, is the Monde that reenters the world left behind the same man?

"Let's take a trip in a trailer
No need to come back at all.
Let's take a powder to Boston for chowder,
Let's get away from it all."

"Monsieur Monde Vanishes" was an enjoyable book to read. Highly recommended. L. Fleisig

One of the values of Amazon's recommendation software is that you are directed to authors with whose work you may not be familiar and who are not carried on the shelves of most bookstores. This is how I found Monsieur Monde Vanishes. It is an economical and very visual book even though the visuals are of mostly unremarkable venues: cheap hotel rooms, the back office of a nightclub, train stations, etc. The narrative value, however, lies partly in bringing such sites to life.

The largely passive Monde exits his successful life in Paris to allow another life in Nice to happen to him. In the end, this change enables him to return to his prior existence possessed of enhanced stature with his business, his wife and his son. The breaking of his life pattern, even though he is compelled to return to it, seems to give Monde additional power over his environment.

Read this book and get swept up in the rhythm of an unspectacular life that is likely different than your own in detail but not in method.

A good friend of mine recommended Simenon books to me. This story is about a successful, middle-aged man who, obsessed with pursuing another life, one day decides to remove himself from everything that he has called his own. Leaving no trace of himself, he uproots himself and heads off in no particular direction. As he continues on his adventure, he encounters a number of enemies and companions all of whom help him realize a new self-awareness. But in the midst of this new comfort, his old life invades. He must then decide not only which life to embrace, but which self he will be.

Though this is the only book I've read so far from Georges Simenon, I'm certain it will not be the last. I appreciated his ability to write with a great economy of words and yet penetrate deep into my imagination. His style is simple, his story is believable, and the questions he raises are not easy to answer. All around, a good, challenging book.

For a full review go to my blog in my screen name and click on the Readings category

"Lock 14" is, like most Maigret mysteries, very enjoyable. The flaw is, this book was previously published under the title "Maigret Meets a Milord," which I already had. Of the 75 Simenon books I own, this is the first time I've encountered this problem, so I can't complain too loudly. I only hope publishers will try to be consistent with titles, that's all.

Acclaimed author, Georges Simenon, once again weaves a capturing tale of mystery and suspense, with the astute Inspector Maigret at the wheel. A series numbering over 100 books, the Inspector Maigret series - after a long stint of unavailability - has, thankfully, been reintroduced by Penguin Books to readers hankering for good mysteries. With an intriguing plot and a cast of believable characters, Lock 14, set early on in the Maigret series), is a swift but gratifying read.

Brusquer and less loquacious than Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, Inspector Maigret is all business as he takes on a new case that is sure to perplex even the most skilled of sleuths.

Set in France, in the region of a lock located on a busy section of canal, Lock 14, recounts the underhanded goings-on along these extensive waterways. With commercial barge interchange in the lock, coupled with high-class yachts and tourist boats, which were often gathered in close proximity, the result was an aquatic melding pot of working class and "upper crust" societies.

The varying degrees of society in the vicinity of Lock 14 have apparently collided, on a rainy April day, when two dockmen stumble upon the cadaver of elegantly-clad Mary Lampson while rummaging under the hay in a stable; 5 hours dead from apparent strangulation. Inspector Maigret is called to piece things together. First to be interviewed is the dead woman's husband, Sir Walter Lampson, an Englishman and retired colonel of the Indian Army, whose pleasure craft is docked near Lock 14. The Inspectors sharp instincts are alerted when Lampson, along with fellow passengers of his yacht - who seem only bent on a life devoted to decadence - appear oddly aloof and indifferent to the murder. Ultimately shedding light on a heartrending occurrence of lost identity and lost love, Maigret gradually pieces together the stories of those involved, and how Mary Lampson and a second victim met their untimely end.

Regardless of the descriptive language outlining the characters, conspicuous is the lack of background on Inspector Maigret himself. Simenon leaves the reader guessing about the Inspectors persona, and the depths that lie beneath his somewhat gruff and abrupt exterior.

Despite their small size, Simenon's Inspector Maigret series of mystery books are highly satisfying and concentrated with page flipping "who-dunnit" suspense, keeping readers captured until the final pages. Lock 14, itself, saw publication in 1931 and yet remains accessible and a pleasure to read. These are excellent books that are small and easy to pack for a weekend getaway or outing, and can be easily enjoyed in a few brief sittings.

Georges Simenon is the author of over 100 Inspect Maigret mystery stories. They were immensely popular in the 1930s through the 1960s but seem to have fallen out of view in the last few decades. Penguin Books has begun to reissue some of those mysteries. They are all fun books to read and Simenon's "Lock 14" is no exception.

Originally published in 1931, Lock 14 is set in a canal in France at a time when commercial barge traffic was a primary means of transporting cargo. The canals were filled with a mix of commercial and tourist traffic which effectively created a mix of upper and working class personalities. Lock 14 begins, as most such mysteries do, with a dead body. A young woman is found dead in a pile of muck, murdered in a stable near Lock 14. She was from a party of seemingly wealthy tourists leading a `debauched' life on the river. Inspector Maigret is called to the scene. He must sort through the muck and find the killer. There are many suspects and more murders soon follow. The rest of the book is devoted to Maigret's attempt to sort out the facts from fiction and find the killer. To reveal any more would spoil the plot.

Simenon's Inspector Maigret mysteries are often compared to Christie's Hercule Poirot mysteries. There are many resemblances to be sure. Both follow typical `plot guidelines' for detective stories; they involve numerous suspects and a conflict between the intelligent observations of the hero and the less astute detective work of the local constabulary. There are some major differences however worth noting. The chief differences seem to me to be Simenon's darker touch and his more diverse selection of `characters'. Whereas Christie's stories most often involved an upper crusty cast of characters, Simenon's characters often come from more inauspicious backgrounds. I also think that Simenon is earthier than Christie (and others). The passengers on the tourist barge were decadent and living a pretty wild existence. The working men and women on the canal and in the towns along the canal are well drawn, rough edges and all. This was a nice change from the parlor room type mystery where everyone speaks with a sophisticated accent of some sort.

Finally, for me, the centerpiece of any detective story of this type is the character of the detective. In the case of Maigret, the more I read of him (three Maigret stories to date) the more I enjoy his character. All in all I found Simenon's Lock 14 to be an enjoyable detective/mystery story. It was a fast-paced well written story with believable characters. Recommended. L. Fleisig

This, my second foray into the works of Simenon, yielded the same satisfying read as the first. Written when Simenon was 28 years old, "Lock 14" sketches shady doings and murder along the extensive barge system in France, where dozens of ships of all sizes and shades pass all day and much of the night in all kinds of weather. What impresses me so much here is Simenon's skillful writing which, with precise strokes, draws exact pictures of scene after interesting scene. All the senses are tapped to give the reader a feeling of the atmosphere, while standing outside the action is Inspector Maigret, absorbing each bit of information into his keen and ever-active mind.
The story line is clever. I had no idea what to make of the first elegant body found in a filthy stable under a bundle of straw. And, in 1931 when this work was written, Simenon did not spare us a host of self-indulgent and jaded characters whose pursuit of pleasure was their main preoccupation. Simenon seems to have an existentialist's outlook. He takes what life gives him and, without judgment, returns it to us as the state of how things are. Here he is on women, "Charming creatures, whose first impulse is always good...They are full of good intentions...The trouble is that life, with its acts of cowardice, its compromises, its insistent needs, is stronger...." I think this is how he felt about all of us.

Lapointe advises Maigret at his apartment that Inspector Lognon, a plain-clothes detective, has been wounded. When Lognon is on the trail of something he makes a mystery of it. The concierge at the address on Avenue Junot says she heard a car and then shots. At the time Lognon seemed to be seeing an apparition. Lognon's wife is a hypochondriac. Madame Maigret takes her in to comfort her while Lognon is in a coma from the attemped murder.

Maigret goes to see a Dutchman, a rich art collector, whose household has been under a sort of surveillance by an ancient inhabitant of the Avenue Junot. Msigret has a feeling that someone is in danger but he doesn't know the person's identity. He calls Scotland Yard because the Dutchman's wife was married formerly to a man named Muir.

As the mystery is uncovered, the subject of the forgery of paintings emerges. It seems that the police officer became a shooting victim through a misunderstanding that he was a member of a rival gang. The economy of the writing, the terse style used, is one of the pleasures of reading the works of Georges Simenon.

As usually, Simenon creates a splendid atmosphere with Maigret.
It's a jubilation to read this book.

This is the first Maigret novel I have read, although I have heard audio dramatisations of the stories and seen televisations. I was a little disappointed. Aware that Simenon produced a vast number of books, almost a production line of material, I did not have high expectations of its qualities. The novel did not transcend them.

The basic plot is simple: a police colleage of Maigret is shot. He is badly injured, his last words before slipping into unconsciousness relate to "an apparition". Maigret is brought into the case and investigates, initially as a controlling force, later through direct interviewing. The investigation leads Maigret into the heart of the Parisian art world, and a sordid world it is too.

Simenon's writing technique is to describe little. The plot is pushed forward by dialogue, and it is dialogue that accounts for the characterisation.

There is something to be said for this approach in certain stories, and in works by some writers the sparseness of description and revelation through dialogue becomes valuable. However, in such writers dialogue does not also bear the burden of progressing the story. The technique (as used by Carver, Kelman, et al) is most effective in stories where little happens. Alterntaively, it can be useful where there is clear first person narration. Sadly, here a lot happens, and the novel is in the third person. The technique is functional at best.

The characterisation appears to be perfunctory, although the reviewer accepts that increased familiarity with the characters in a series of novels inevitably increases the depth of characterisation - and as this is a first reading the subtler nuances of the characters may be missed.

Maigret himself and his wife are most fully drawn, and there are some charming side characters (including a voyeur who keeps watch over his neighbourhood noting the comings and goings from a Dutch art colllectors home; and the wealthy Ducth art collector himself).

In some ways the novel feels like a film treatment, and it is perhaps with actors filling the roles that the characters would take on a little vitality.

This book was not for me, but in its favour it was quickly read. Perhaps the best of Simenon lies elsewhere...

A married colleague leaves the apartment building of a beauitful young woman and is gunned down by a professional killer. Chief Inspector Maigret is called in to lead the investigation. Was Inspector Lognon cheating on his bed ridden wife or engaged in an undercover investigation? These are some of the questions that Jules Maigret and his team from the Quai des Orfevres must figure out.

Inspector Maigret likes to tell his admirers that he has no technique. Each case is solved in its own way. Those of us who love the series get to see the many facets of Maigret's brilliance. The fun of "Maigret and the Appiration" is that we get to see the Inspector in his role as the brilliant interrogator. He is smart, incisive and unrelenting in this role.

Over the years, Georges Simenon published more than 500 million copies of Jules Maigret stories. This volume was published in 1963 and Simenon had been writing Maigret novels for pver thirty years. "Maigret and the Apparition" is a good example of Simenon's writing when he was in his prime. Recommended.

I read this book while I was on my vacation and I think it is exactly that sort of book :a vacation one. It is ok.

Atmosphere is stranger than in others Maigret's novels. But it's also very good novel. If you have read "Pedigree" (Simenon's childhood autobiography) you can make interesting parallels between one of the two young boys and Simenon himself. It seems to say to us that the line between criminals and the other humans isn't very large ...

You can compare my review to the other one on this book. OUr views are not the same.

I found this book, which I read in French while living in California, to be a delight. It takes place in Liege, in the country of Simenon's birth, long before most of the novels. And part of the suspense (for it is a suspense murder mystery) is waiting for Maigret to appear.

Eventually the large figure in his dark winter overcoat enters the story, well supplied with his pipe(s) and tobacco, his mind racing over possibilities. And we are not disappointed, even after reading countless later stories. Not only does Simenon give us a satisfactory ending, but we have a splendid picture of an almost "old world" Liege and the kind of people who lived and worked in it.

No, definitely not just a "holiday book", this. Rather, a book for all seasons. Give it a try and you will agree.

Long neglected and at the bottom of the barrel in sales here on Amazon, this gem takes place in Liege, Belgium presumably in 1931, the year it was written. Two teenaged boys, anxious to dip into the till of the Gai-Moulin nightclub where they waste away their time, hide in the basement until the place empties out. After working up their courage to commit their first criminal act, they creep upstairs, light a match to see where they're going, and find a dead body sprawled across the floor. They panic and run off. From this intriguing beginning, the story unwinds with a typical cast of Simenon characters and seeming contradictions.

I first quibbled with the translator, Geoffrey Sainsbury, as I thought the writing lacked the usual pop I've grown accustomed to. Word choice for a translator is key to either adding life to the prose or making the story flat. But this translation is the only one out there, and eventually the prose and pace picked up and drew me in thoroughly. Another slight difficulty for me was the non-appearance of Maigret until well past the middle of the book. We find out later that he's been there all along, hiding not just from the police, but from us too. Without Maigret, this work is merely good and gives us delicious European flavor and atmosphere as well as those ever-interesting characters.

From what I've read of Simenon thus far, his view of pre-WWII European social class structure comes across loud and clear: upper class folks are bored, corrupt, and blundering. They are contrasted to salt of the earth types, hard-working people scraping together a living, and the middle class, all of whom are knocked around by the elite. Maigret (Simenon) is the master weaver in these stories who understands the common threads with which European society is sewn and, standing apart, can analyze people's motives, morality, and lives. He himself seems to be of the middle class, as this brief description of his life at his apartment on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir reveals: "...Maigret was looking through his mail. 'Anything interesting?' asked Madame Maigret as she vigorously shook a rug out the window." Simenon plants all kinds of characters and events in the "rug" he weaves, and then vigorously shakes them out, cleaning his concoction nicely for us. All very entertaining.

Highly recommended for a literary evening by the fire.

This is my first Simenon title ever. Yet Inspector Maigret is hardly foreign to my sensibilities, as his independence, brilliance, and taciturn pipe-smoking personality have disseminated throughout countless popular mysteries, films, and TV shows. I found this mystery quite entertaining, even though it follows the well-worn path for such works as throwing out dead-end clues, and assembling a cast of peculiar characters together in a dreamy mysterious setting. Penguin's neat new printings of these classic tales are easy on the eyes. In this particular story, the coastal town of Concarneau is thrown into a frenzy by a series of attacks on its prominenet citizens. A skittish hotel waitress is obviously part of the mystery, as is a large yellow dog who suddenly appears on the scene. Everything is satisfyingly resolved in the end, and Maigret appears to be a genius. This is a quick, neat read, full of atmosphere and literary sensibility. I'll be visiting Simenon again shortly.

Georges Simenon was the author of over 100 Inspector Maigret mystery stories. They were immensely popular in the 1930s through the 1960s. Inspector Maigret stories also appeared in film and TV version. Simenon and Maigret seem to have fallen under the radar in recent decades but in recent years he seems to have been rediscovered by a new generation of mystery/detective story fans. Penguin Books has begun to reissue some of those Maigret mysteries and the New York Review of Books Press has reissued some of his `hard stories', stories that did not feature Inspector Maigret. Simenon's Inspector Maigret Mystery, "The Yellow Dog" was a fun book to read and is as good a place to start for anyone wishing t discover (or re-read) Simenon.

The Yellow Dog, written in 1931, is set on a fishing town in Concarneau, France. One of the town's leading citizens has been shot. A series of murders or attempted murders soon follow. At the same time a stray, rather mangy looking yellow dog is wandering around the town. Inspector Maigret is sent to clear up the mess. In so doing he must deal with panicked locals, an irate mayor demanding an end to the affair, and a cast of characters who each, in their way, have done something to make themselves suspicious. The rest of the story involves Maigret's attempt to unravel the chain of events and find the guilty party or guilty parties.

This is a `classic' detective story in the sense that Simenon does not stray for the general formula or boundaries found in classic stories by Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie. There are twists and turns in the plot, red herrings, and fake clues, but eventually justice (or some semblance of justice) is served.

What sets Simenon apart is the character of Maigret and the supporting cast. Maigret was, or seems, ahead of his times in his aversion to `higher authority'. He also seems to have a deep and clearly defined set of moral values that does not necessarily coincide with the values held by his higher ups or by those reporters or office holders that seem to second guess his every move. This personality, this ahead of its time jaundiced eye, may explain the resurgence of interest in his books.

The Yellow Dog is an enjoyable read. Recommended. L. Fleisig

This story was written in 1931 soon after the very first Jules Maigret stories started coming out. It takes place in a small fishing village on the coast of Brittany. Someone is trying to kill town notables and the only clues are a stray yellow dog and some very large foot prints. A perfect location and jumping off point for a Jules Maigret mystery.

The fun of a Georges Simonon novel is the unique way in which Inspector Maigret approaches a crime. At one point Maigret notes, "I ran this investigation from the end backward-which doesn't mean I won't go the other way in the next one. It's a question of atmosphere, a question of faces...When I first got here, I came across one face that appealed to me, and I never let go of it."

It is this odd perspective that is so appealing in the Maiget stories. It is an approach which separates him from the Anglo-American tradition of mystery writing. It is the individual genius that counts and not the investigative procedure. Jules Maigret is the essential "bella figura" or man of genius. The fun of this novel is that the reader sees the character of Maigret while he still being formed by Simenon. Maigret evolves into a character who will appear in 75 novels of which more than 500 million editions will be sold. For those who love Inspector Maigret, these initial novels are an important indicator of what type hero he will become.

Those of you who are also readers of Ed McBain, will notice the similarity to his books. In this story we get a new feel for Maigret who is a Superintendent in this one, and is once again at his very annoying best. It's always a pleasure to read how Simenon loved to 'stick it' to the Provinciales in between the wars France. He loved to open the door on their pomposity and their groping for status.

The story is pretty straight forward, but it's the way that Maigret goes about what he does that is so much fun. While everyone is watching his every move, including a good portion of the Paris national press, he goes about as if he doesn't care. Smiling at everyone and puffing on his pipe he is the archetypical civil servant in no hurry to finish his work. Meanwhile the Mayor is spending all his time trying to protect the good name of his Town.

The ending is almost 'Hercules Pirot' in style, with everyone of the candidates brought together in the Police Barracks at the end to hear Maigret deductions. More than anything there is a decision by Maigret to protect two of the characters who are then left to go on with their lives, as McBain does in many of his stories.