fictionfan's review against another edition
5.0
Maigret’s lapse…
Cécile Pardon has become a regular visitor to Inspector Maigret at his office in the Police Judiciaire building in Paris. A spinster who lived with her elderly widowed aunt, Cécile had become convinced that someone was coming in to their apartment at night while they slept. Maigret had made a superficial gesture towards investigating, but everyone thought she was imagining things. And worse, everyone was teasing Maigret that she kept visiting because she had a crush on him. So on this morning, when Maigret saw her sitting patiently in the waiting room he left her there and got on with other things. When eventually he went to collect her, she was gone. Later, the body of her aunt is found in the apartment, strangled, and Cécile is nowhere to be found. The title gives a clue as to her fate.
Realising the aunt must already have been dead when Cécile came to see him, Maigret suspects that she knew who the murderer was and wanted to tell him directly rather than report it to the local police. He feels that if he had only taken the time to speak to her, Cécile may not have been killed. Maigret is too sensible and too experienced to blame himself for her death – he’s quite clear in his own mind that the murderer is fully responsible for that – but nevertheless his slight lapse makes him even more determined than usual to see that justice is done.
This one has quite a complicated plot for a Maigret novel, with several suspects and possible motives. Mostly it’s set in the apartment block in Bourg-la-Reine that Cécile and her aunt lived in – a block that the aunt also owned. For it turns out that she’s a rich old woman, but miserly, always convinced that her relatives are scrounging from her. She’s also unpleasant, treating poor Cécile like an unpaid servant, being unwilling to assist her nephew even though he’s out of a job and his wife is about to have a baby, and so on. She plays her many relatives off against each other, hinting to each that they will be the one to inherit when she dies. But these aren’t the only suspects – rumour has it that she keeps large sums of money in the apartment since she doesn’t trust banks, so anyone may have decided to break in, kill her and steal the money. However, the apartment has a concierge who controls entry to the building, so that if this was what happened, it must have been one of the other tenants, or the concierge herself.
Later in the book, Maigret finds himself being accompanied on his investigations by a visiting American criminologist, Spencer Oates, who has been given the opportunity to study the great man’s method. But Maigret, as he has said in other books, doesn’t have what he thinks of as “a method” – he simply speaks to the people involved, learns as much as he can about the victim, studies the location and the timings, thinks himself into the mind of the murderer, and uses his intelligence and experience to work out what must have happened. So he uses Oates as a kind of sounding board as he develops his theory, thus allowing the reader to follow his thinking too.
There’s a sub-plot about a man, one of the tenants, who has previously been jailed for his inappropriate behaviour with young girls. Some aspects of this might jar with modern readers, as girls are shown both as vulnerable and predatory. Although it’s an unpopular viewpoint now, I find this much more realistic than the idea that girls remain innocent angels until the day they are legally adult, so I felt this was an accurate if unflattering portrayal of adolescent girls, and also that Simenon gave a contrast in Maigret and the ex-prisoner of the response of the good man and the bad – one resisting temptation, the other preying on vulnerability.
I listened to the audiobook narrated by Gareth Armstrong, and as always he did an excellent job of creating distinctive voices for Maigret and all the other characters.
Overall, I think this is one of the best of the Maigrets I’ve read so far. Simenon’s portrayal of the unglamorous side of Paris is as excellent as always, but this one is better plotted than some, and the themes and characterisation have more depth. And I always enjoy when the solution manages to surprise me but still feel credible. Quite a bleak story, but Maigret’s fundamental decency and integrity and his happy home life always stop these stories from becoming too depressingly noir. Highly recommended.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
Cécile Pardon has become a regular visitor to Inspector Maigret at his office in the Police Judiciaire building in Paris. A spinster who lived with her elderly widowed aunt, Cécile had become convinced that someone was coming in to their apartment at night while they slept. Maigret had made a superficial gesture towards investigating, but everyone thought she was imagining things. And worse, everyone was teasing Maigret that she kept visiting because she had a crush on him. So on this morning, when Maigret saw her sitting patiently in the waiting room he left her there and got on with other things. When eventually he went to collect her, she was gone. Later, the body of her aunt is found in the apartment, strangled, and Cécile is nowhere to be found. The title gives a clue as to her fate.
Realising the aunt must already have been dead when Cécile came to see him, Maigret suspects that she knew who the murderer was and wanted to tell him directly rather than report it to the local police. He feels that if he had only taken the time to speak to her, Cécile may not have been killed. Maigret is too sensible and too experienced to blame himself for her death – he’s quite clear in his own mind that the murderer is fully responsible for that – but nevertheless his slight lapse makes him even more determined than usual to see that justice is done.
This one has quite a complicated plot for a Maigret novel, with several suspects and possible motives. Mostly it’s set in the apartment block in Bourg-la-Reine that Cécile and her aunt lived in – a block that the aunt also owned. For it turns out that she’s a rich old woman, but miserly, always convinced that her relatives are scrounging from her. She’s also unpleasant, treating poor Cécile like an unpaid servant, being unwilling to assist her nephew even though he’s out of a job and his wife is about to have a baby, and so on. She plays her many relatives off against each other, hinting to each that they will be the one to inherit when she dies. But these aren’t the only suspects – rumour has it that she keeps large sums of money in the apartment since she doesn’t trust banks, so anyone may have decided to break in, kill her and steal the money. However, the apartment has a concierge who controls entry to the building, so that if this was what happened, it must have been one of the other tenants, or the concierge herself.
Later in the book, Maigret finds himself being accompanied on his investigations by a visiting American criminologist, Spencer Oates, who has been given the opportunity to study the great man’s method. But Maigret, as he has said in other books, doesn’t have what he thinks of as “a method” – he simply speaks to the people involved, learns as much as he can about the victim, studies the location and the timings, thinks himself into the mind of the murderer, and uses his intelligence and experience to work out what must have happened. So he uses Oates as a kind of sounding board as he develops his theory, thus allowing the reader to follow his thinking too.
There’s a sub-plot about a man, one of the tenants, who has previously been jailed for his inappropriate behaviour with young girls. Some aspects of this might jar with modern readers, as girls are shown both as vulnerable and predatory. Although it’s an unpopular viewpoint now, I find this much more realistic than the idea that girls remain innocent angels until the day they are legally adult, so I felt this was an accurate if unflattering portrayal of adolescent girls, and also that Simenon gave a contrast in Maigret and the ex-prisoner of the response of the good man and the bad – one resisting temptation, the other preying on vulnerability.
I listened to the audiobook narrated by Gareth Armstrong, and as always he did an excellent job of creating distinctive voices for Maigret and all the other characters.
Overall, I think this is one of the best of the Maigrets I’ve read so far. Simenon’s portrayal of the unglamorous side of Paris is as excellent as always, but this one is better plotted than some, and the themes and characterisation have more depth. And I always enjoy when the solution manages to surprise me but still feel credible. Quite a bleak story, but Maigret’s fundamental decency and integrity and his happy home life always stop these stories from becoming too depressingly noir. Highly recommended.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
han_cat's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
furfff's review against another edition
1.0
Aka maigret and the spinster. While it starts in a fashion similar to others in the series that I liked (maigret not being intellectually/emotionally available to someone who seeks out his assistance and the consequences of that), this one is just so muddled and unpleasant to me.
komet2020's review
3.0
Here we have a story that is more than meets the eye. Paris is enmeshed in a soupy fog that gives the morning the appearance of a Gothic evening. Maigret makes his way from his home to police headquarters where a young lady with a modest and mousy demeanor, Mlle. Cécile Pardon, has been dutifully awaiting his arrival. Lately, she had been a frequent visitor to police headquarters, vainly trying to get Maigret's attention about some "irregularities" she had noticed at the apartment of her old and miserly aunt with whom she lives and has dutifully catered to her needs for years.
When finally Maigret deigns to meet with Mlle. Pardon, she is gone."His first reaction was to shrug it off. Then, as he sat down again, he frowned. This was not like Cécile, who had once waited seven hours for him, sitting motionless in the waiting room. There were papers all over his desk. He searched through them for the slip she had filled in. At last, under youong Duchemin's file, he found it.
'I must see you most urgently. Something terrible happened last night.' - Cécile Pardon"
Maigret, now in reflection mode, thinks back several months ago to a meeting he had at police headquarters with Mlle. Pardon in which she told him of her suspicions that someone had been rummaging through her aunt's personal effects during the evening. Someone who has managed somehow to get access to her aunt's apartment at a time in which she and her aunt --- who is a virtual invalid --- are fast asleep. Cécile explained to Maigret that "... not only did I find that two chairs had been moved, but also that the thread had been broken. ... So, obviously someone must have been in the apartment. Whoever it was spent some time in the sitting room and, what's more, opened my aunt's desk. I'd rigged up something there, too. It's the third time in two months. My aunt has been almost wholly incapacitated for some months. No-one has a key to the apartment, and yet the lock hasn't been forced. I haven't liked to mention to Aunt Juliette, it would only worry her. All the same, I'm certain of one thing, nothing has been taken. If it had been, she would have mentioned it; she's so suspicious of everyone."
His curiosity fully aroused, Maigret makes his way to the house in the Bourg-la-Reine neighborhood where Cécile Pardon had lived with her aunt for many years. There Cécile's aunt is found in her apartment, dead. Cause of death: strangulation. A search is then carried out for Cécile, who had been so anxious to speak with Maigret that morning. Eventually she is found in a somewhat obscure corner of police headquarters - dead. Cause of death: murder.
The rest of the novel is centered upon Maigret's efforts to solve both murders, a process which takes him down a winding path involving many of the characters in the house in the Bourg-la-Reine. Never a dull moment here. Any reader need only afford him/herself some leisure and become immersed in this lively, engaging story.
When finally Maigret deigns to meet with Mlle. Pardon, she is gone."His first reaction was to shrug it off. Then, as he sat down again, he frowned. This was not like Cécile, who had once waited seven hours for him, sitting motionless in the waiting room. There were papers all over his desk. He searched through them for the slip she had filled in. At last, under youong Duchemin's file, he found it.
'I must see you most urgently. Something terrible happened last night.' - Cécile Pardon"
Maigret, now in reflection mode, thinks back several months ago to a meeting he had at police headquarters with Mlle. Pardon in which she told him of her suspicions that someone had been rummaging through her aunt's personal effects during the evening. Someone who has managed somehow to get access to her aunt's apartment at a time in which she and her aunt --- who is a virtual invalid --- are fast asleep. Cécile explained to Maigret that "... not only did I find that two chairs had been moved, but also that the thread had been broken. ... So, obviously someone must have been in the apartment. Whoever it was spent some time in the sitting room and, what's more, opened my aunt's desk. I'd rigged up something there, too. It's the third time in two months. My aunt has been almost wholly incapacitated for some months. No-one has a key to the apartment, and yet the lock hasn't been forced. I haven't liked to mention to Aunt Juliette, it would only worry her. All the same, I'm certain of one thing, nothing has been taken. If it had been, she would have mentioned it; she's so suspicious of everyone."
His curiosity fully aroused, Maigret makes his way to the house in the Bourg-la-Reine neighborhood where Cécile Pardon had lived with her aunt for many years. There Cécile's aunt is found in her apartment, dead. Cause of death: strangulation. A search is then carried out for Cécile, who had been so anxious to speak with Maigret that morning. Eventually she is found in a somewhat obscure corner of police headquarters - dead. Cause of death: murder.
The rest of the novel is centered upon Maigret's efforts to solve both murders, a process which takes him down a winding path involving many of the characters in the house in the Bourg-la-Reine. Never a dull moment here. Any reader need only afford him/herself some leisure and become immersed in this lively, engaging story.
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