2.0 out of 5 stars
The ever wary eye upon French society, June 7, 2010
This review is from: Maigret and the Hotel Majestic (Paperback)
Simenon is always an OK read. As time goes on, maybe one of the unforseen feats of Simenon, is that he has left a series of quite accurate images of French society as he experienced it. In this book we discover the world of Hotel Majestic in Paris, seen from the perspective of the employees. We are also a trip to Cannes and Côte d'Azur discovering the life of prostitutes there. The plot of the crime Maigret is unveiling in this book is quite sophisticated, perhaps a bit to sophisiticated?
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3 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
And there were 88 of them?, August 5, 2005
This review is from: Maigret and the Hotel Majestic (Paperback)
This is my first foray into the Inspector Maigret books, one of eighty-eight mysteries written over the course of 42 years by Georges Simenon. Written in his native tongue, these books have been translated by others from French to English, and there are minor jolts here and there when everybody is "speaking" in English in the translation, but one character can't understand what another is saying because he is speaking in another language, yet both appear to speak in English in the dialogue. Also, the author bombards us with information, names, and details that do little else but pad the number of pages. And there's a glaring error. In the beginning and end sections of the book, it is the cold of winter, which a number of characters complain about. But in the middle, chapter 6 and 7, it is suddenly the Fourteenth of July and everybody is sweltering in the heat. Yet, the entire story takes place in a matter of days. Maigret's investigative procedure seems to be to put himself adjacent to the suspects, and because of his reputation as a crack detective, they start blathering on and on and saying things they shouldn't as he remains quiet. And the clue that solves the case is so obscure, and so particular to an uncommon human experience, that I would dare say only a miniscule number of readers would have any knowledge at all of the circumstance. Still there were eighty-eight of these stories comprising a very popular series of books and yielding a TV series and several films. So, I will withhold judgment on the Maigret books until I read a few more. But if this one is any indication, I just don't understand it. (Note: After having read a number of these stories, I new believe that this particiular Maigret book can be explained away by the premise that even Babe Ruth struck out once in a while.)
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