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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 of the Month: Maigret voyage (Maigret and the Millionaires)
4/15/08 –1. Two keys to a novel
This is a fairly unusual novel, with Simenon taking his character into several locales outside of Paris. Why does the author force his Chief Inspector to travel, instead of letting him peacefully lead his investigation in his city? Why does Maigret feel like he's "botching his case", as he says in Ch. 3?
I think that one of the keys to the novel can be found in this sentence in Ch. 5: "What bothered him most was the impression he had that in some way his movement and actions were predetermined. He hadn't come to Lausanne because it was his idea to come, but because he was being led along a path that he followed, like it or not." And we shouldn't forget that this novel is the first of the Maigrets – and the first short novel – that Simenon wrote in Switzerland. He had just moved there in July 1957, to the château at Echandens, which he called "Noland" in the dating of the novels. After having lived on almost every continent, Simenon was in the country where he'd spend the rest of his life. A man who'd always had "wanderlust", he finally settled down more or less definitively, although he did move a few times within Switzerland. And as he brought with him his family, his memories and his ideas for novels, naturally he also brought his character, his Chief Inspector. We recall that when Simenon had "emigrated" to the United States, he'd also brought his Chief Inspector there in a few novels (cf. NEW, CHE). So there's a certain logic in having Maigret also make a stopover in Switzerland, even if it's rather short. It is however, sufficient for the Chief Inspector to discover some essential elements there, such as Simenon himself had discovered, or at least which the author considered essential... the "peaceful inns of Vaud", the "local wines", the "great Swiss hospitality", however vigilant with VIPs, and a certain "Swiss gravity" mixed with "real intimacy". As I'm Swiss myself, I hasten to add, however, that Lake Geneva, the Alps, Geneva and Lausanne only make up a small part of my country, and that Switzerland contains many other regions besides those cited in the book!
Lastly, we note that if Simenon wanted to have his Chief Inspector discover his adopted country, he sends him back "home" again, for the end of the novel takes place in Paris... and in fact it's hard to imagine a "classic" Maigret case that could end anywhere except in the Chief Inspector's office, with the demis and sandwiches brought up from the Brasserie Dauphine, and a suspect confessing his crime at the end of a final interrogation....
Another key to the novel is no doubt the theme of "the naked man", a recurring theme throughout Simenon's work. This search for the naked man, which we find by scraping off surface respectability and appearance... who better to lead it than Maigret, who as a policeman, could gain entry into all levels of society? This theme is also taken up in the novel, with the symbolic images of Ward lying naked in his bath, and Van Meulen, naked also, getting a massage in his hotel room. Simenon wants to show us that social appearances only hide the same basic reality: the same fears inhabit all men, the same need for reassurance, the invention of rites and rituals....
2. "Well, old partner?"
In Chapter 2 an important character in the Maigret saga appears, Dr. Paul. As I haven't yet presented his portrait, this is a fine occasion for it...
complete article
original FrenchMurielle Wenger
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.
Steve TrusselThis 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."
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.
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