Brief
thoughts on the book by Georges Simenon
This was my first dip into
the world of Inspector Maigret, the fictional detective that appeared in 75 novels
and 28 short stories by the Belgian author Georges Simenon. As a huge fan of
French cinema, I was already somewhat familiar with the name of Simenon from the countless adaptations of his work from
filmmakers as varied as Jean Renoir, Bertrand Tavernier, Claude Chabrol, Béla
Tarr and Patrice Leconte, but it's only in the last couple of years that I
became an active reader of his works.
I'd previously purchased
another of Simenon's books - the non-Maigret related "The Snow Was Dirty"
(1948) - but never got around to reading it. I stumbled across this book in a
shop in St Ives and was immediately intrigued, both by its cover, and the title.
The Madman of Bergerac [Georges Simenon,
1932]:
New translations of all the
Maigret books have been re-issued by Penguin Classics, each with an evocative
and atmospheric cover image taken from the work of photographer Harry Gruyaert.
What I liked about "The
Madman of Bergerac", beyond the sparse but descriptive writing and its
intriguing procedural, was the way the author details Maigret's intuitive
thought-process. Finding himself incapacitated from a gunshot wound and
stranded in a small town that is completely unfamiliar to him, the book has Maigret
piece together the narrative of a serial murderer – and the unlikely conspiracy
surrounding them – through the accumulation of seemingly insignificant details;
the whole investigation becoming a masterpiece of subjectivity and suggestion.
At one point the character
even sends his wife out to play detective, while the reader remains in the
company of the bedridden Inspector; an aspect of the plot that makes me think
the book may have been an influence on the Alfred Hitchcock directed masterpiece
Rear Window (1954).
I've read several other
Maigret books since: "The Flemish House" (1932), "Maigret's
Madwoman" (1970) and "Maigret and the Loner" (1971). "The
Flemish House" in particular is a favourite, featuring the same sparse
writing style as the book in question, but capturing the atmosphere and
hostility of its location in a more oddly unreal, even nightmarish way. Simenon's descriptions of the port town, the titular
house and its dark web of secrets is all black soil, endless rain and peeling
yellow wallpaper, implanting imagery that is stifling and apocalyptic; its
pitiless view of human cruelty and indifference reminding me of another of Simenon's
books, the incendiary "The Krull House" (1939).
