Customer Reviews

Maigret and the Apparition (Harvest/HBJ Book)

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A married colleague leaves the apartment building of a beauitful young woman and is gunned down by a professional killer. Chief Inspector Maigret is called in to lead the investigation. Was Inspector Lognon cheating on his bed ridden wife or engaged in an undercover investigation? These are some of the questions that Jules Maigret and his team from the Quai des Orfevres must figure out.

Inspector Maigret likes to tell his admirers that he has no technique. Each case is solved in its own way. Those of us who love the series get to see the many facets of Maigret's brilliance. The fun of "Maigret and the Appiration" is that we get to see the Inspector in his role as the brilliant interrogator. He is smart, incisive and unrelenting in this role.

Over the years, Georges Simenon published more than 500 million copies of Jules Maigret stories. This volume was published in 1963 and Simenon had been writing Maigret novels for pver thirty years. "Maigret and the Apparition" is a good example of Simenon's writing when he was in his prime. Recommended.

Lapointe advises Maigret at his apartment that Inspector Lognon, a plain-clothes detective, has been wounded. When Lognon is on the trail of something he makes a mystery of it. The concierge at the address on Avenue Junot says she heard a car and then shots. At the time Lognon seemed to be seeing an apparition. Lognon's wife is a hypochondriac. Madame Maigret takes her in to comfort her while Lognon is in a coma from the attemped murder.

Maigret goes to see a Dutchman, a rich art collector, whose household has been under a sort of surveillance by an ancient inhabitant of the Avenue Junot. Msigret has a feeling that someone is in danger but he doesn't know the person's identity. He calls Scotland Yard because the Dutchman's wife was married formerly to a man named Muir.

As the mystery is uncovered, the subject of the forgery of paintings emerges. It seems that the police officer became a shooting victim through a misunderstanding that he was a member of a rival gang. The economy of the writing, the terse style used, is one of the pleasures of reading the works of Georges Simenon.

As usually, Simenon creates a splendid atmosphere with Maigret.
It's a jubilation to read this book.

This is the first Maigret novel I have read, although I have heard audio dramatisations of the stories and seen televisations. I was a little disappointed. Aware that Simenon produced a vast number of books, almost a production line of material, I did not have high expectations of its qualities. The novel did not transcend them.

The basic plot is simple: a police colleage of Maigret is shot. He is badly injured, his last words before slipping into unconsciousness relate to "an apparition". Maigret is brought into the case and investigates, initially as a controlling force, later through direct interviewing. The investigation leads Maigret into the heart of the Parisian art world, and a sordid world it is too.

Simenon's writing technique is to describe little. The plot is pushed forward by dialogue, and it is dialogue that accounts for the characterisation.

There is something to be said for this approach in certain stories, and in works by some writers the sparseness of description and revelation through dialogue becomes valuable. However, in such writers dialogue does not also bear the burden of progressing the story. The technique (as used by Carver, Kelman, et al) is most effective in stories where little happens. Alterntaively, it can be useful where there is clear first person narration. Sadly, here a lot happens, and the novel is in the third person. The technique is functional at best.

The characterisation appears to be perfunctory, although the reviewer accepts that increased familiarity with the characters in a series of novels inevitably increases the depth of characterisation - and as this is a first reading the subtler nuances of the characters may be missed.

Maigret himself and his wife are most fully drawn, and there are some charming side characters (including a voyeur who keeps watch over his neighbourhood noting the comings and goings from a Dutch art colllectors home; and the wealthy Ducth art collector himself).

In some ways the novel feels like a film treatment, and it is perhaps with actors filling the roles that the characters would take on a little vitality.

This book was not for me, but in its favour it was quickly read. Perhaps the best of Simenon lies elsewhere...