Book review: The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By - Georges Simenon

 

Having decided not to read the blurb on the back it took me a while to get into this story and brush aside my preconceptions. Based on the title I had expected the main character to have seen some hideous crime and either chosen to escape the consequences or perhaps had seen something happen as a commuter train chugged by.

Once I got past that idea and settled into what becomes a story of cat and mouse and a psychological battle for the protagonist Kees Popinga to stay ahead of the law.

There is a sense his luck will eventually run out but because the story is predominately told through his eyes you end up wondering if he can keep going and evade the police.

After all he has suffered a shock to the system that eradicates his comfort zone and removes any chance of continuing with his normal life. The next major events are overshadowed by that mental collapse and the sense that the most normal of men has become anything but.

By the end as he suffers misfortunes that cause him to run out of options you find yourself sympathising with his situation. The final moments also leave you pondering about what is insanity and whether that delivers Popinga an escape from facing the consequences in reality.

That seems to be the main takeaway for me around the idea of a mental collapse and examining what happens when a world is turned upside down and the boundaries of normal life, the nine to five and Sunday diners, are removed.

As usual with Simenon the writing flows easily and the sketches of Parisian cafes and boarding houses are delivered with an acute eye but a deft touch.

This isn't a Maigret story and if anything the Police are described at a distance for the vast majority of the story. But this has all the hallmarks of a study into caracter, the results of extreme pressure and the choices made as that mounts.

book review - My Friend Maigret - Georges Simenon

"Who would have dared not to take him seriously? Heaps of people, who did not have easy consciences, trembled at the mention of his name. He had the power to question them until they cried out with anguish, to put them in prison, send them to the guillotine.
In this very island, there was now someone who, like himself, heard the sounds of the bells, who breathed the sabbath air, someone who was drinking in the same room as himself the previous evening and who, in a few days, would be shut up once and for all within four walls."

The story starts with a down at heel former criminal being murdered on the island of Porquerolles. The night before his body is discovered the petty crook had been telling the villagers at the pub that he was a personal friend of the great chief inspector Maigret. As a result it is assumed that the attack was an indirect one on Maigret and he needs to come and solve the case for his own protection.

But things are not as easy as they sound because Maigret is being shadowed by a Scotland Yard detective studying French methods. Maigret can hardly reveal his methods are about pottering around smoking his pipe and listening to people so there is a tension there from the start.

Added to that tension is the relationship between Maigret and the deceased and a prostitute who was a girlfriend of the victim and was also helped in the past by the policeman.

That help seems to cross the line between policeman and offender but it is a grey area that Maigret finds himself in a few times on the investigation and is part ofn his methodology.

In the end the crime is solved through Maigret's methods with some help from the Englishman who manages to make a few passing comments that stick in the French detective's mind.

They have to go through the rigmarole of interviewing the villagers but it is out and about between the cracks of human life that the key to the mystery lies and where Maigret finds the answers.

Reading Simenon is like slipping neck-up into a hot bubble bath. He relaxes, amuses and gently challenges the concentration of the reader before tying it all up neatly at the end.

Thoughts at the half way point of My Friend Maigret

In some respects a Maigret story is my reading equivalent of a pack of Minstrels. Something to relax and enjoy, a bit of comfort and something totally pleasurable.

The grumpy Parisian detective has his own ways of working but in this story he is hampered by the shadowing of a detective from Scotland yard who has been sent to see how the great French crime solver works.

The case that presents itself is one that starts off on the wrong foot with an criminal who was boasting of his friendship with Maigret being shot dead. The assumption is that the person who killed him has a hatred for Maigret and so the detective is sent to the island in the Med where the crime has occurred to find the killer.

As the English policeman heads with him the reader is given an insight into the mind of Maigret and the way he works, which if he was given the choice would be just to walk round the village smoking his pipe.

A review will follow shortly...

book review - The Friend of Madame Maigret

There might be a snobbishness with thrillers but there is a skill to weaving a story that is both unfathomable but equally realistic. The prolific Georges Simenon is better than most at managing to do both with a helping hand from well established characters in the form of Inspector Maigret and Paris.

Paris plays a bigger role than you might expect with the city setting the mood with its rain soaked streets and seedy bars full of gossips and informants. Then there are the hotels and brothels that provide refugee for murderers. In this case there is a carefully choreographed location with a book binder's flat and workrooms sitting on a corner looked on by a grocers and a café.

An anonymous tip-off to the police starts the investigations at the bookbinders with the binder taken into custody facing the charge of disposing of a man’s body in his furnace.

Muddying the waters is an ambitious lawyer who represents the bookbinder and the binder’s girlfriend who swears they lead a quiet life without the opportunity for murder.

The ball is already rolling when Maigret gets involved with the case and he constantly regrets not being able to start afresh and investigate it with methods that he would have deployed from the start. But the irony is that the link between the bookbinder and the murderer’s comes from Mrs Maigret who manages to meet some of the gang purely by mistake while waiting for a dental appointment.

She weaves in the occasional piece of information that Maigret ferments in his brain and finally leads to a solution. What really unlocks the mystery is Maigret’s ability to understand and predict human behaviour to the extent that he can reveal links and actions that no one else could have guessed at.

Of course he solves the case but he does so displaying great understanding and humility and shows that he is head and shoulders above most of his colleagues.

The Friend of Madame Maigret - post II

You are rooting for Maigret as he gets attacked and undermined by the press and in some cases his own police department but he seems to be more than two steps ahead of anyone else.

Finally he starts to flex his muscles and the net draws around the guilty with various loose ends getting sewn up and the reader being taken on a fair journey of having to guess if the bookbinder is guilty or not.

Without giving the ending away its safe to summarise by pointing out that the superintendent gets his man but also puts justice back on an even keel.

This is a book that drags you into a world of rain soaked Parisian streets and into the politics of small traders. It also tackles the influence of the press and the impact on an investigation when the waters become so muddied by the impact of gossip and speculation.

A very enjoyable read that might not have the ending you expect or particularly wanted but one that leaves Maigret standing tall as usual as a policeman in a field of his own.

A review will follow soon…

The Friend of Madame Maigret - post I

If you are struggling with a book, and Lines of Fate is just that, then the perfect alternative is a great thriller.

This is one of the 75 books written by Georges Simenon and it develops the character of Maigret's wife. Not hugely but more than in the other books I have read and she plays a pivotal role in helping sole the crime.

There is a book binder waiting in prison to find out if he is going to be charged on the basis of an anonymous tip-off that he burnt a body in his incinerator. But there is something else going on with Maigret being hounded in the press by the book binder's lawyer.

But the unshakable detective not only gets a grip on the case but starts to take the initiative. But you still feel the bookbinder is innocent and the real story lies elsewhere.

More tomorrow...

book review - The Madman of Bergerac

The reason for choosing this book by Georges Simenon after the Idle Burglar is that this book finds a younger and more dynamic detective. The irony is that after he throws himself off a train at the start of the book to try to follow a mystery figure and gets shot in the shoulder as a reward Maigret is bed bound.

The book then takes on a Rear Window type feel with Maigret looking out of his hotel window down onto the town square of Bergerac. Despite not being able to move a great deal Maigret manages to upset and alienate the leading lights of the community and refuses to play along with the idea that the case has been solved with a body being found in the woods near the train track.

Most of the great detective stories evolve around a character that just seems to have a nose for deception and a gut feeling that leads to the killer. Maigret is no different and his dogged persistence of the doctor, his wife and sister-in-law and the prosecutor. He manages to unsettle them enough to solve the mystery but he risks his own reputation in his pursuit of the truth.

With so many detective's either being loners, divorced or in slowly disintegrating marriages it is rather touching to see Maigret relying on his wife as his eyes and ears when he is trapped in his hotel room. She understands not only his personality but by the end starts to appreciate his methods.

Maybe it is because he wrote so many books but Simenon never really pushes Maigret but lets the story flow. There is no angst filled moments when he pulls up in a car and stares out at a horizon and wonders whet he is doing with his life just a determined attempt to solve a crime and make a difference.

The other consequence of the output by Simenon is that you know there are so many books to choose from that there is no pressure to keep going straight from one book to another to finish a series. You do end this wanting to read more but knowing that Maigret will be there when the mood takes you.

Version read - Penguin paperback

book review - Maigret and the Idle Burglar

When is a policeman not allowed to be a policeman? The answer in this Georges Simenon thriller is when the policeman is hampered by red tape and procedure. So when it starts with Maigret being invited by a colleague to view a corpse that has been dumped in the cold the detective discovers who the victim is, that he was a burglar and even his past history. But because the prosecutor has to handle everything the old detective is sent home.

Maigret manages to investigate the death of the burglar in parallel with keeping an eye on a spate of robberies he is charged with solving. The way Maigret goes about looking into the case of the idle burglar shows compassion, human understanding and an appreciation of working with those on the wrong side of the law. All of the traits that would not be acceptable to the system. So he expresses frustration and bitterness but all the time gets closer to solving not just how he died but how the burglar lived his life.

If there is a moral from this story it is that it is possible to write a character that is prepared to be human. Someone who can show that they sympathise and have the flexibility to turn a blind eye in order to solve a bigger problem. Maigret is written in light brush strokes but you can visualise a detective two years away from retirement with a wife who desperately wants him to take it easy. Not only is the detective coping with age, modern methods and the system but he is also fighting against an attitude that will let certain criminals go unpunished if they are important enough.

For a slim book it leaves you with the pay off that the robbery crimes are solved and the criminals caught and put into the pipeline to face justice. But the case of the poor forgotten burglar is only solved in the mind of Maigret who knows that the killers will get away with it. An ending that is not common for a thriller, but one that is thought provoking nonetheless.

Version read - Penguin paperback

Lunchtime read: The Madman of Bergerac

Although he is bed bound Maigret manages to conjure up visions of the town and the inside of the main inhabitants rooms using his imagination, maps and the descriptions from his wife.

He keeps prodding away at the doctor in particular and annoys almost everyone but finally his old police colleague starts to see that there is some method in his madness. The final manoeuvre is to bring up the mother-in-law of the doctor after Maigret comes to settle on him as the key to the case.

With the elderly woman in the hotel things start to happen rapidly as she starts to tell Maigret the truth about the relationship between the doctor and her daughters. The doctor arrives and then tries to escape with his lover and the climax comes with him choosing to end his life cornered on the third floor of the hotel rather than face the truth and so in the arms of his real love, his wife’s sister, they commit suicide.

Maigret has solved the crime of not only the madman of Bergerac, who turns out to be the doctor’s father, but also why he was on the train in the first place. The fact he manages to do so all from his bed in the hotel is a feat of his ability to read people and places. But he is assisted by his wife and in a complete difference to the modern thrillers, where most policemen are divorced or going through a marriage breakdown this was clearly written at a different time when policing was demanding but not marriage destroying.

It is a bit like Rear Window except that everything that happens is seen by Maigret in his mind rather than out of the window looking out on the main town square.

A review will follow soonish…

Lunchtime read: The Madman of Bergerac

This is one of the Maigret books that was written much earlier on than The Idle Burglar but ironically after an initially bit of bravery throwing himself off a train Maigret spends his time bed bound with a wounded shoulder.

The story starts to unfold almost immediately with the detective heading off on his holidays to see an old colleague who has based himself out in the country. On the way there he moves into a second class sleeper and is so disturbed by the man weeping and fidgeting in the bunk above he is awake when the man jumps off the train.

Maigret follows him and after scrambling up from his fall down the bank he is rewarded with a bullet in the shoulder and a trip to hospital. The immediate suspicion for a couple of murders that have happened in the woods near where Maigret was picked up falls on the detective. But he is able to come round and quickly inform them that he is not the ‘madman of Bergerac.

Once patched up he moves into the hotel looking over the town square and starts to irritate and infuriate the local gentry – doctor, public prosecutor and chief of police – by investigating the crimes of the mad man of Bergerac.

Even his old police colleague comes in for suspicion and by the time he has staged a reception in the hotel to gather evidence from public witnesses there is no one amongst the town leaders who would not like to see the back of Maigret.

More tomorrow…

Lunchtime read: Maigret and the Idle Burglar

The cases of the armed robberies and the Swiss burglar are both solved but they do not interlink in a way that might have been imagined.

Where there are similarities it is in the way that women are often the loyal protectors of their men but end up being victims of their crime. It also shows how the legal system will, sometimes protect those that are guilty because of the risk of making a scene and upsetting the influential and wealthy.

In the end the scenario that Maigret expected might have happened with the Swiss burglar being caught red-handed seems to have transpired. The kicks that the Swiss got out of stealing when the people were actually at home seems to have been his undoing.

But both cases are used not only to show the skill Maigret has in solving crimes but the dangers of a cumbersome legal system that is more worried about following the rules than punishing the guilty.

As an introduction to the character of Maigret this might not have been the best choice because he is clearly defined at this point and on the brink of retirement so it makes sense to dip into the Simenon canon and pick one of the earlier books so that is what I plan to read in lunch breaks next.

A review will follow soon…

Lunchtime read: Maigret and the Idle Burglar

Maigret is not a traditional policeman in many senses. But the main one that differs from the norm is his ability to respect not just criminals but others operating on the wrong side of the law.

In his chase for the killers of the Swiss burglar he interviews the woman lodging next door, who happens to be a prostitute, and also manages to upset his superiors by suggesting that a wealthy ‘Friend of France’ might be involved in something criminal. He treats most people the same regardless of their social background. Because he has just a couple of years to go before retirement he is often found at home smoking his pipe and chatting with his wife rather than slumped up against a bar with other policemen talking shop.

Again that breaks the norm because he is almost at the end of his career and is still married whereas most fictional detectives and policemen tend to be loners unable of keeping a relationship going.

As the story moves to its conclusion there is a passage where the author signals that things are going to come to a climax. What leads up to it is the escalation in the gang raiding shops and banks with one of them being killed by an off-duty policeman. Tailing the gang leads them back to the suspect they have been after all along. Meanwhile with the Swiss burglar it looks like he was killed with a statue after being caught in the house of the rich friend of France.

Presumably the two cases are interlinked and there will be a twist at the end that has not been predictable? All will be revealed tomorrow…

Lunchtime read: Maigret and the Idle Burglar

Once caught by the bug it is easy to find yourself drifting to the crime section in your local library. So finding myself back there once again who better to pick up than one of the most prolific writers and his famous detective creation by one of the Inspector Maigret novels by Georges Simenon.

Coming on the back of a few Police procedural thrillers there are echoes here with the Parisian police being crippled by changes introduced that hands the power to the magistrates. Maigret is called to inspect a body that has been dumped with the face bashed in but because of the rules he should not even be there.

The irony is that he knows the victim and could be helpful but is never given the chance being encouraged to leave by the magistrate’s representative. He goes home but knows that the victim is a Swiss burglar who works alone, keeps his head down and is someone that in an odd way Maigret respects.

He visits the mother to tell her that her son has died to try to find a motive but comes away without any answers and goes back to trying to locate a gang member from a ring that is terrorising post offices and banks in the capital.

More tomorrow…

book review - The Little Man from Archangel

This little book by the man behind the Maigret detective stories Georges Simenon has a victim and a death but they are not the ones that you expect after the scene is set out. In a tale of discrimination, paranoia and the loneliness of being left completely alone this is on one level a story about trust and on another something a great deal more profound.

The trust story reminds you a bit of that film How to Murder Your Wife starring Jack Lemmon where he plays the role of a cartoonist who enjoys the bachelor life and then draws a fantasy cartoon strip about killing his wife. She sees the cartoon and heads off to sulk but her disappearance and the cartoon sparks a murder trial. No body can be found that but does not stop the prosecution whipping everyone up into a frenzy.

The pace here is a lot more sedate but darker because there is no humour. Jonas Milk, a Jewish immigrant from Russia who runs a second hand bookshop in a French market square goes to bed one night to find his wife has left him. There is a 16 year age gap between them and he was forced into the marriage by her mother against the will of her father and brother, who never come to terms with Milk. She walks out and rather than admit she is off cavorting with another man Milk when asked over his routine morning coffee lies about her travelling to see a friend in Bourges.

He persists in the lies whenever asked by family and friends and sticks to it as he goes through the routine of a morning and afternoon coffee and buying the croissants for his and his wife’s breakfast. The problem is that the family suspect him of foul play and as he sticks to the lie it becomes harder for him to then change his story, which he finally has to do under police questioning. The breakdown of trust with the wife is complete when the police tell him that she was frightened of him, a revelation that crushes him.

But on a more profound level there is a story here about exclusion and the speed to which a community will close its doors to an outsider. You can be living alongside people all of your life but the minute there is even a hint that something is wrong you become different – a Jew, a Russian a jealous old man married to a beautiful young woman.

It is that wall of suspicion that finally drives Milk to break with his routine and close in on himself. The potential release comes when a woman tells Milk where his wife is proving that he did not kill her but by then it is no longer, if it ever has been for him, about her. He chooses to end his life rather than live anymore among people who cannot look him in the eye and so blatantly talk about him behind his back. The memories of abandonment that come back to haunt him from his childhood experiences emigrating from Russia return to haunt him and remind him of how he is alone.

The power of the book is wrapped up in the final stages when the emphasis switches from the wife to the husband and he emerges as the real victim and ultimately is killed by the community around him. Simenon has a way of describing the cruelty of people too frightened to stand up and speak unless backed by the crowd in a way that any of us who has ever had that experience, even for a fleeting moment in a school playground, can relate to.

This book has as much resonance today than it ever did because bullying continues and the question of how we treat immigrants is as topical as ever.

Version read – Penguin paperback

The Little Man from Archangel - post III

"Not only was he no longer at home in his own house, but he was no longer at home ion his own skin."

The book ends with a conclusion that would have been hard to predict at the start and it makes you fell very sad about the way that people can be bullied for no genuine reason. In the end Gina’s disappearance unravels Jonas Milk’s world and all of the insecurities emerge and he feels he has only one option, one act that can make it all better.

Bullet points between pages 120 – 140

* Jonas is escorted home by two detectives who ask him to take them through his home room by room and by the end of the search, which is witnessed by several neighbours, Jonas feels completely alienated from his world and home

* He goes into the backyard and plans to take his own life but then decides that he has no reason for that and wanders back through to make a cup of coffee before being disturbed by a knocking on the door

* A woman who works in a hotel tells him that his wife has been there with travelling salesmen for the past few days and it looks as if she has gone with him to Paris culminating an affair that has been going on for six months

* Armed with that information Jonas thinks about heading to the police station to clear his name and point them in the right direction and the reader assumes he has gone to do that but suddenly the focus shifts to the market gossips and they are all concerned they have not seen him

* Not concerned in a caring way but in the same intrusive inquisitive way that has led Jonas to the brink – with a wife that feared him, a community that has turned their back on him and a family that abandoned him – he takes his own life and is found hanging in the back yard

What a punch in the guts that ending is and it makes you question every time you have ever been tempted to get involved with office gossip

A review will follow soonish…

The Little Man from Archangel - post II

I'm not feeling too well so although I have read some Chekhov this is all I can manage to punch into the keyboard tonight.


This book is brilliantly written charting the swift move from community regular to an outcast viewed by everyone with suspicion. Jonas is a catalogue of insecurities that all start to come out under the pressure of suspicion and Gina’s disappearance, which is probably innocently with another man, raises all of the problems that he had brushed under the carpet.

Bullet points between pages 56 – 120

* Jonas keeps the lies up telling everyone that his wife has gone to Bourges but it becomes increasingly difficult particularly after her brother almost accuses him of doing her harm and makes it clear he doesn’t believe him

* A wall of suspicion starts to build and although Jonas tries to remain the same the people in the market square he meets everyday start to treat him differently and make him feel even more uncomfortable

* It is an irony that the man from Archangel, a Russian Jew who chose to stay in the market after his parents went back to Russia to try and find his sisters, who he has not seen for years, should suddenly be made to feel so alien

* Things step up a gear with the police detective popping into the shop and asking him where Gina is and this time Jonas tells the truth but the policeman cannot seem to understand why he would not be jealous of an adulterous wife and you sense he is looking for a motive for murder

* The wall of silence continues until Jonas is invited into the police station to see the superintendent and there the extent of the malicious gossip about him becomes clear with a missing person’s report having been filed and suggestions Jonas decapitated his wife and then dumped her in the canal

* The worst disclosure during the interview, which involves Jonas revealing his wife has gone off with millions of francs worth of precious stamps, is when the superintendent informs him that Gina had said she was scared of him – something the mild mannered bookseller just cannot comprehend

More tomorrow…

The Little Man from Archangel - post I

With the memories of the enjoyable experience reading the thriller Roseanna it seemed like a good idea, in a real rush to get to work early for a meeting, to grab something also about the police and suspicion.

A while back one of the purchases made in the top of the Blackheath Oxfam branch was a Georges Simeon book. Bearing in mind he is famous for the Inspector Maigret series it seemed like a good choice to keep me occupied for the rest of this week.

Bullet points between pages 1 – 58

* The book starts with a second hand bookseller lying about the movements of his wife who has gone off and as it unravels seems to have left him to run off with another man – something she has done plenty of times in their brief marriage

* Jonas Milk lives a life of habit in the market square surrounded by other traders including the grocer and his wife and son, who are the family of Gina, his wife who seems to have been sleeping with men since she was 15

* Everywhere Jonas goes he is asked where Gina is and he continues to tell everyone that she has gone to Bourges but the lie starts to get him into trouble with her family and friends and when he discovers she has stolen his expensive stamp collection it looks like she is not coming back

* He realises that very soon his lies will come undone but even before that he is starting to be treated suspiciously by Gina’s family, not all of whom like the man who is 16 years older than the young woman

More tomorrow…