The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 17 October 1999
by Georges Simenon
A most prolific author, Simenon created a long series of novels in which the protagonist is the chief inspector of police in Paris. Maigret hails from a long line of hard-boiled detectives. Indeed, he inspired many like him in later years. In this novel (a translation of Maigret au "Picratts"), he encounters a young stripper working at a family-run club in the Montmartre district. Scared and drunken, she tells the police about a threat to the life of some unknown countess. This opens a whole can of worms, involving murder, sexual violence, the nightclub and the unique area of the city in which all this occurs. For its time, even in Paris, this book might have seemed somewhat lurid. It is surprisingly explicit in its sexual innuendo. Maigret rides above all of this, for a time, but begins to feel comfortable with a few drinks at the club Picratts. He is a hard nosed character, also surprisingly brutal in some of his methods. The tone of the novel is dark, the streets of Paris are murky and damp, and in the terse writing style, there are stark characters. There is, as well, a curious separation between the male and female characters, as if the author had shaky or somewhat chauvanistic feelings about the women. It is, anyway, an entertaining little pot-boiler.
Also by Simenon: [At the `Gai-Moulin'] [A Battle of Nerves] [The Blue Room]