Skip to main content

No. 28: Maigret Sets a Trap by Georges Simenon (reading notes and reflections)

Original title: Maigret tend un piege. Translated by Daphne Woodward (1965). 

This is the first Maigret book I have read in ages. 

Opening a Maigret novel is like visiting old friends, not just Maigret, Madame Maigret, Janvier and all the rest, but also Paris. 

In this book, we jump into the middle of an investigation of serial murders in Montmartre and Maigret is about to set a trap for the killer. It doesn't go quite to plan - he escapes, but does leave behind a piece of evidence that will lead the police to him. 

Like most other Maigret books I have read, this isn't a whodunnit. In the Maigret books, the identity of the killer isn't often hidden from the reader until the last chapter, and instead we get to see how Maigret figures it out (although sometimes the killer is known from the beginning). Then the rest of the book is about either proving it or applying so much psychological pressure that the killer gives up and confesses. In this book, there is the usual psychological warfare, but, unusually, Maigret doesn't wage it directly against the killer.

One of the things I like about Georges Simenon's books is the psychological elements. He has written taut, insightful psychological novels, like The Conspirators, and usually includes such elements in the Maigret books, but on this occasion the part of the psychology that is used to explain why the killer kills is quite superficial. One does have to keep in mind that the book was written in the mid-1950s, when theories about serial killers and sociopaths were different from what they are now, but it still felt a bit cheap. The psychological warfare, however, is masterfully done and plays on that age-old human sentoment: jealousy.

Not the best Maigret novel I have read, but it's not the worst either. I don't think I will keep this one - instead I will release it and give someone else a chance to enjoy it.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book 7: Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński (reading notes)

-This reads like fiction - prose more beautiful than one has come to expect from non-fiction and many of the chapters are structured like fiction stories. There is little continuity between most of the chapters, although some of the narratives or stories spread over more than one chapter. This is therefore more a collection of short narratives than a cohesive entirety. You could pick it up and read the chapters at random and still get a good sense of what is going on. -Here is an author who is not trying to find himself, recover from a broken heart, set a record, visit 30 countries in 3 weeks or build a perfectly enviable home in a perfectly enviable location, which is a rarity within travel literature, but of course Kapuściński was in Africa to work, and not to travel for spiritual, mental or entertainment purposes (he was the Polish Press Agency's Africa correspondent for nearly 30 years). -I have no way of knowing how well Kapuściński knew Africa - I have never been there...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bibliophile discusses Van Dine’s rules for writing detective stories

Writers have been putting down advice for wannabe writers for centuries, about everything from how to captivate readers to how to build a story and write believable characters to getting published. The mystery genre has had its fair share, and one of the best known advisory essays is mystery writer’s S.S. Van Dine’s 1928 piece “Twenty rules for writing detective stories.” I mentioned in one of my reviews that I might write about these rules. Well, I finally gave myself the time to do it. First comes the rule (condensed), then what I think about it. Here are the Rules as Van Dine wrote them . (Incidentally, check out the rest of this excellent mystery reader’s resource: Gaslight ) The rules are meant to apply to whodunnit amateur detective fiction, but the main ones can be applied to police and P.I. fiction as well. I will discuss them mostly in this context, but will also mention genres where the rules don’t apply and authors who have successfully and unsuccessfully broken the rules. 1...
9 comments
Read more

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...
Post a Comment
Read more