Published: 1931
French title: Au Rendez-Vous des Terre-Neuvas
Englished: 2014, David Coward
The Grand Banks
Café - Georges Simenon
After three months at sea, a trawler returns to its home
port of Fécamp in northern France. Shortly after the return, the captain,
Octave Fallut, is found dead by strangulation in one of the harbor basins. The
wireless operator of the trawler, Pierre Le Clinche, barely twenty years old,
is the person of interest since he was seen prowling around the boat on the day
of the killing.
An old friend of Chief Inspector Maigret, Jorissen, a
teacher at Quimper, writes an appeal to Maigret to establish the innocence of
the young telegrapher. Once in Fécamp, Maigret settles in at the Grand Banks
Café, a hangout of sailors. Once again, we have Maigret trying to crack open a
closed society in order to figure out events and feelings that lead up to a murder.
Slowly Maigret uncovers unreasoning lust and vengeful anger that caused the
murder.
Like many of the early, Depression-era, Maigret novels, this
one has a heavy atmosphere. Somber but not as depressing as Maigret and the Yellow Dog (also
written in 1931). There are various women characters, with Madame Maigret and
the widow Bernard providing stability and domesticity, Le Clinche’s fiancé Marie
Léonnec providing loyalty and forgiveness, and Adèle Noirhomme for idiot lust
and chaos. Maigret is true to himself.
He listens to conversations, taking in the atmosphere of the harbor and its
denizen. He is part anthropologist and part psychologist as he bores into the
complexity of relationships and interior struggles.
Maigret also delves into the heart of France during the
period between the wars. His focus is on his own people, people with little,
who toil to get by. This is the France of small shops, cafés on every street
corner, and artisans (such as rope makers) whose day you’d have thought passed
long before 1930.
Simenon loved the sea so his stories set near locks, on barges
and in small fishing ports are worth reading. He’s great with atmosphere, which
is also a tribute to the translator. David Coward has also translated Alexandre
Dumas, Pierre
Choderlos de Laclos, and the Marquis
de Sade. It was a good idea for Penguin to commission new
translations of these classic mysteries.
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