Customer Reviews

Maigret and the Nahour Case

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An elegantly dressed young man and woman show up at Dr. Pardon's office around one in the morning, after a dinner party with the Maigrets. The woman, who is very blonde and beautiful, has a gunshot wound. Dr. Pardon dresses the wound, but the couple leaves before he can get any information from them. Dr. Pardon calls his friend Maigret for advice on what to do.

The next day an exhausted Maigret gets a case involving another gunshot wound, fatal this time. Felix Nahour, a wealthy Lebanese man, has been shot dead in his home. A picture begins to emerge of a drama involving more than one gun.

The characters, as always, are interesting. The dead man is a professional gambler who succeeds more often than not at outwitting a variety of casinos based on theories of mathematics and probability. His wife is an ex-beauty queen.

Maigret is certain that everyone in the household is lying, including the maid and secretary. It's as slippery a situation as the weather outside. The city is freezing and inundated with snow, and Parisians, including Maigret, are all losing their balance on the ice.

Maigret doesn't much like this case, but it makes a pretty good story nonetheless.

An elegant blond holds the key to both a murder and its motive.

When Maigret receives an urgent call from his friend Dr. Pardon he responds immediately, despite the late hour; it seems that the doctor had just treated an apparently wealthy woman for a suspicious gunshot wound, but before he could notify the authorities she disappeared with her companion. The doctor's story gains some perspective when the same woman turns up at the house on Avenue de Parc-Montsouris where Felix Nahour has just been found - shot to death. This is a masterful exploration of the twin passions of love and hate as they mingle in the shadowy mind of a criminal.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Georges Joseph Christian Simenon (February 13, 1903-September 4, 1989) was a Belgian writer who wrote in French.

Inspector Maigret of the Paris Police is awoken late one night by a phone call from a doctor friend of his who has just treated a woman in his home office for a bullet wound. As the doctor was cleaning up and before he could notify the authorities, the lady and her male escort disappear. It's another case for the pipe-smoking, hypochondriac, and grumpy Maigret. And he moves it along speedily as he meets some very interesting characters, holds some seriously penetrating inquisitions, does some masterful detective work, until page 155 or so, the average length of a Maigret mystery. At that point, it's time for the author, George Simenon to wrap it up. But it's not the author's job; it's supposed to be Maigret's job. But, Simenon just concludes the story with a very pat explanation not resolved by the detective work that preceded it. He cheated. Up until now, this is a fine example of a good Maigret mystery. But, when the word count quota is satisfied, the author dictates that it is time to stop, whether the story backs the conclusion or not. It's becoming almost as much of a mystery to find a good Maigret book as it is to resolve a Maigret mystery itself.