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Le Commissaire Maigret
Police Judiciaire
36 Quai des Orfèvres
Paris...

The Maigret Forum This is not a static website. It changes almost daily. The Maigret "Forum," an open bulletin board for notices, opinions, information and discussion related to Maigret and Simenon, has become the most active feature of this site. It's where new books, websites, articles and features are first announced and displayed, and includes an indexed archive of the entire past Forum... back to 1997!

Click here for the current Forum. Here's a recent sample - Maigret and the mysteries of the crossroads 5/25/13 – Maigret and the mysteries of the crossroads by Murielle Wenger original French On rereading La nuit du carrefour [NUI], and watching the episodes adapted for the television series with Jean Richard and Bruno Crémer, I wondered about the description of the location, the "Three-Widows Crossroads" where the core of the action takes place. Several years ago, a Maigretphile, Guido de Crook, had a site online where he presented certain locations of Maigret investigations outside of Paris. This site, Maigret's journeys in France, disappeared from the web in 2006, but Steve Trussel was able to recover a part of it. Among the novels studied, we find La nuit du carrefour. Guido, in analyzing the text of the novel, presented his version of the location of the three houses at the crossroads, an important element of the plot. I'd like to reexamine this description, and present my version, relying on my rereading of the text, and compare it with the adaptations mentioned above. Let us then follow step-by-step, the text of the novel... In the first pages, we find Maigret at the PJ, at the end of the interrogation of Carl Andersen, following the discovery of the murder of the diamond merchant. Maigret is summarizing the major points from the transcript of the interrogation, and makes a statement that allows our first determination of the locale of the scene of the crime... "You then rented a country house on the national road between Paris and Etampes, some two miles from Arpajon, at the place called the Three-Widows Crossroads." Thus we realize that the intersection actually exists. Represented schematically it is something like this (north is at the top): After releasing Andersen, Maigret went to the spot himself... A crossing. A garage with its five gasoline pumps, painted red. On the left, the Avrainville road, marked with a signpost. Since we know that Maigret has come from Paris, passing through Arpajon, we know that the route to Avrainville is actually on his left. We're at a true crossroads. The text continues... All around, fields as far as you could see. "We're here!" said the driver. There were just three houses. First, that of the garage keeper... Opposite that, a millstone villa... A copper plaque, "Emile Michonnet, insurance." The other house was 200 yards away. The wall surrounding the yard only allowed a view of the second floor, a slate roof, and some fine trees." Now we have to position the three houses around the intersection. Two early indicators allow us an approach to the locations... first, in the transcript of the interrogation Maigret was reading, it said, "At 7:00 a.m. Sunday morning, M. Emile Michonnet, insurance agent, who lives in a villa 100 meters from you..."; Lucas, on location, had telephoned Maigret: "Hello! I'm at the Three-Widows Crossroads. I'm calling from the garage which is about 100 yards from Andersen's house" We can thus place Michonnet's villa closer to Andersen's house than the garage. But how to position the three houses with regard to each other? That, as we will see, is where the problem lies. After Maigret's first visit with Andersen, Lucas went to find him... "The two of them walked in the darkness, along the shoulder of the road... They had reached Michonnet's villa, which was like one of the points of a triangle, whose other angles were formed, on one side by the garage, and on the other by the House of the Three-Widows. Forty yards between the garage and the Michonnets. A hundred yards between them and the Andersens. Connecting them, the shining, regular ribbon of the road..." It's most logical to begin by situating the garage. By definition, it's along the national road. But on which side? The following text will help... "Maigret regarded the triangle... On the right, the main road, opposite the garage, the Avrainville road branching off..." So Maigret and Lucas are walking north on the national road, and if the Avrainville road which branches right is opposite the garage, then it must be situated on the left. We can add it to our map with a box containing a "G" for garage... To this point, we are in agreement with the representation made by Guido de Crook (here). But now the problem is to situate the Michonnet's house with regard to the garage. We know, from the extract above (Maigret's arrival at the crossroads), that the insurance agent's villa is "opposite" the garage. The problem is, where is this "opposite"... to the east, or the south of the garage? Guido proposes a location to the east, while I advocate a position to the south. Why? Here is my explanation... complete article original French

A phenomenal author and his phenomenal character Georges Simenon was by many standards the most successful author of the 20th century, and the character he created, Inspector Jules Maigret, who made him rich and famous, ranks only after Sherlock Holmes as the world's best known fictional detective. There is nothing commonplace about the life of Georges Simenon, and he and his works have been the subject of innumerable books and articles. The Maigret stories are unlike any other detective stories — the crime and the details of unraveling it are often less central to our interest than Maigret's journey through the discovery of the cast of characters... towards an understanding of man. Simenon said he was obsessed with a search for the "naked man" — man without his cultural protective coloration, and he followed his quest as much in the Maigrets as in his "hard" novels. Although most of Simenon's work is available in English, it was originally written in French. Simenon was born and raised in Belgium, and while Paris was "the city" for him, the home of Maigret, he was 'an international,' a world traveler who moved often and lived for many years in France, the United States, and Switzerland. Because he wrote in French, and for the most part lived in French-speaking countries, most of the books and magazine articles about him were written in French as well. Unlike his own books however, many of these have never been available in translation. Because Simenon lived to be nearly 90, and left a legacy of hundreds of books — from which more than 50 films have been made, along with hundreds of television episodes — there is much to collect, to examine, to display and discuss. This site takes Maigret as its theme, and Simenon as its sub-theme. There is much here about all aspects of Simenon and Maigret, but not so much about Simenon's other, non-Maigret books. There are full texts of many magazine and journal articles, including many translated into English here, as far as I am aware, for the first time. In this way non-French-speaking Maigret fans can now share, in a time-compressed form, articles about Simenon and Maigret spanning more than 70 years, as well as a forum for discussion and contribution which... Enough. There's a lot here. Enjoy your visit. Come back again, and feel free to contribute to the Forum. Corrections, comments, and suggestions are welcome. Steve Trussel

Bibliography: booklists etc.

This site, first opened on August 29, 1996 as "Inspector Maigret," has spread in various directions from its beginning as primarily a bibliography of editions in English. The "new look" reflects various aspects of this development, but the bibliography remains a central feature.

Counting Maigret: statistics etc.

For the forty-year period from 1931 through 1972, a new Inspector Maigret investigation appeared at the average rate about 2.5 per year: 75 novels and 28 short stories, 103 episodes of what has been called George Simenon's "Maigret Saga."

Texts: Maigret on-line

Full-length texts - reviews and articles about Maigret and Simenon, as well as new translations of stories, articles, (and even a novel!) which have never appeared in English.

Index to the texts and articles on various pages.

Simenon

Articles from the Simenon symposiums, journals, program listings, and other not-Maigret-only Simenon material.

Gallery: Maigret covers and photos

Maigret paperback covers, postage stamps, theme music, locations... more.

Plots

Plots of all the Maigret novels and stories.

Shopping for Maigret: books on-line

The one-button, quick-links to the main on-line book dealers are still available, for shopping for Maigret titles.

Maigret on Screen: films and videos

Various aspects of Maigret on film and video.

Maigret on the Web: Links

Links to the rest of the on-line world of Maigret on the Internet.

background photo: adapted from "Two models for Maigret,
Commissaires Massu and Guillaume." [Ph. Keystone]
"Quai des Orfèvres on the Cité Island at night" [Jean-Pierre Ducatez]

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