Reading Those Classics #14

Classic Set in France. Beautifully evoked is the physical content, the sensuous satisfaction of a beautiful early summer day in Paris at the beginning of the novel.

Maigret’s Patience – Georges Simenon

Retired mobster Manuel Palmari has spent the last couple of years in a wheelchair, disabled by machine-gun fire from a couple of hoods he later had snuffed. But he’s shot dead in his Paris apartment. The death of his past informer brings Inspector Maigret into the case. Nearing retirement, Maigret feels a subtle tug, a link hard to define, to a member of his own generation being ushered from this vale of tears.

One highlight of this better-than-average Maigret story is chapter four in which Maigret canvasses the residents of Palmari’s apartment building on rue des Acacias. The building houses a cross-section of Parisians: an American lesbian who’s a journalist, the bartender of an elegant hotel, pensioners at peace with the world and not, two sales reps, a chiropodist, a gym teacher, a deaf and dumb codger and maids occupying the rooms on the top floor, not to mention the victim and his hottie companion.

The investigation is completed in only two days, giving this an unusually short time span. Also unusual is Maigret’s office on the Quai des Orfèvres is not the setting for dramatic action. Starting from an altogether banal affair, this story is an excellent example of the way in which series Maigret conducts his investigations: soak up the atmosphere with questions and keen observation, light fires under people of interest and then see which way they jump.

One of Simenon’s strengths is describing the weather. Spring is described wonderfully. It stands in contrast to the dark memory the novel ends with, the damage and death at Douai by the first bombing attack of the German invasion in May, 1940.

 

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Prize Winning Classic: The Moviegoer – Walker Percy

Classic Novella: Old Man – William Faulkner

Classic Epistolary Novel: Augustus – John Williams

Classic Comic Novel: Thank you, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse

Classic Short Stories: New York Stories – John O’Hara

Classic Air Pilot Memoir: Wind, Sand, and Stars - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Classic Set in the Big Apple: Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos

Classic 19th Century Novel: Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite – Anthony Trollope

Classic Police Procedural: Wolf to Slaughter – Ruth Rendell

Classic War Memoir: Flight to Arras - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Classic American Mystery: Might as Well Be Dead - Rex Stout

Classic Courtroom Drama: A Woman Named Anne – Henry Cecil

Classic Abandoned: Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon