Maigret-lite (but not light)
Feb. 17th, 2021 08:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatsiBook Review: The Dancer at the Gai-Moulin, by Georges Simenon
After I acquired two Maigret books in the Libreria sale last January, it turned out we had a third one, so it was added to the to-read list. According to Goodreads, this is number 10 in the series, so presumably Maigret was well-established by this point. It's cleverly written, but I would not really recommend it as a starting point. It reminded me of the Doctor-lite episodes, in that Maigret features actively for only a part of the story. A couple of teenagers linger in a Liège night-club cellar, with a plan to rob the till after closing time; but instead they discover a dead body and flee the scene, clumsily, with suspicion falling quickly on themselves when the body is discovered - elsewhere in the town - the following morning. The Belgian police (remember, Christie imagined Poirot as a retired Belgian police officer) do not appear to be making much substantive progress on the case, and Maigret provides them with some assistance via distinctly unorthodox methods. Again I found this a rather original plot, though the moralising elements on adolescent behaviours were perhaps a bit reminiscent of Graham Greene. I enjoy the curious but effective way that Simenon says very little (all three books are quite short) and makes the reader, without feeling overburdened, do a lot of the work themselves.
After I acquired two Maigret books in the Libreria sale last January, it turned out we had a third one, so it was added to the to-read list. According to Goodreads, this is number 10 in the series, so presumably Maigret was well-established by this point. It's cleverly written, but I would not really recommend it as a starting point. It reminded me of the Doctor-lite episodes, in that Maigret features actively for only a part of the story. A couple of teenagers linger in a Liège night-club cellar, with a plan to rob the till after closing time; but instead they discover a dead body and flee the scene, clumsily, with suspicion falling quickly on themselves when the body is discovered - elsewhere in the town - the following morning. The Belgian police (remember, Christie imagined Poirot as a retired Belgian police officer) do not appear to be making much substantive progress on the case, and Maigret provides them with some assistance via distinctly unorthodox methods. Again I found this a rather original plot, though the moralising elements on adolescent behaviours were perhaps a bit reminiscent of Graham Greene. I enjoy the curious but effective way that Simenon says very little (all three books are quite short) and makes the reader, without feeling overburdened, do a lot of the work themselves.