Maigret and the Man on the Bench by Georges Simenon
translated from the French by Eileen Ellenbogen Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1975 French edition originally published in
1953 as "Maigret et l'homme du banc"
A man is found stabbed to death in a dark alley in a busy
Parisian district. He lived with his wife and daughter in a
faraway suburb, and is identified as the former foreman at a
local wholesale warehouse. The shoes and the tie that the man
is wearing are wrong and the amount of money found in his
wallet is far more than he usually carried, says the wife.
Inspector Maigret is in charge of the case. The weather in
Paris is foul.
While at first things point to a street mugging, Maigret and
his team slowly start to uncover one anomaly after another in
this ordinary man's life. Even though he had never changed
the hours of his daily commute to Paris, it turns out that he
had in fact lost his job three years before.
Witnesses report seeing him sitting on benches during work
hours. The shoes and tie are not accounted for by his family
and point to a place of lodging in the city and to a possible
parallel life away from his family. A last element of the
puzzle is his source of income, given that he does not seem
to have had a job since being fired.
Maigret goes about the investigation in his usual grumbling,
world-weary but always professional way. He has taken a
strong dislike to the man's wife, a greedy and domineering
woman whose main concern is social standing and appearances.
The daughter, a tense young woman, has also attracted his
attention. Does she have a boyfriend or lover? Who benefited
from the man's death? Did the family know he had been
fired?
The rest of the novel develops around an analysis of
motivations and a careful sifting of details through routine
police work. Progress is slow. The wintry weather and
depressing ambience are perfectly recreated (as always in
Simenon) and match Maigret's attitude step by step. He wants
the case to end just like he wants the winter to end
-- that is, without much hope but also without
desperation.
In the final chapters, the clues finally begin to converge
and a theory emerges. This theory (as usual) Maigret keeps to
himself, offering the reader few but sufficient glimpses. In
the end, justice is served and nobody is happy.
It is hard not to praise such a well-written procedural.
While conceding that this is far from the most exciting stuff
I have read recently, I am long past the point of questioning
Maigret or Simenon. I read these remarkable series books the
way I read the Wall Street Journal: from cover to cover and
with the certainty that the story couldn't have been written
much better. And I move on. Unless there's another Maigret
somewhere within reach.
Note: The translation is exemplary.
Mario Taboada
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