Maigret on the Riviera [Hardcover]

Georges Simenon (Author), Geoffrey Sainsbury (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1988

The balmy, relaxing Cote d'Azur is not exactly conducive to investigating a murder, and Inspector Jules Maigret has trouble taking the murder of an inoffensive, middle-aged Australian seriously. A deft, psychologically fascinating story about men who kick over the traces--and of men who do not.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Simenon's latest mystery to be published here, a poignant tale deftly translated by Sainsbury, his famed detective Maigret must resist the beguiling vistas of the resort paradise of Antibes to concentrate on the murder of William Brown, a retired Australian sheep rancher. For 10 years after deserting his wife and children, Brown had lived with his mistress Gina Martini and her meddlesome mother. Maigret discovers that Brown got money regularly from his son Harry, manager of the family business. When the two women divulge that their late "protector" periodically disappeared and squandered the checks on drink, Maigret traces Brown to a sleazy bar where he finds two more women in the dead man's lifebuxom, overdressed, Fat Jaja and a young prostitute named Sylvie. Maigret resorts to his fine-tuned intuitions to solve this unerringly told mystery.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation)

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 137 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt; 1st edition (April 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151551499
• ISBN-13: 978-0151551491
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,841,640 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A breezy little masterpiece, August 13, 2009

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Patto (Vermont) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Maigret on the Riviera (Paperback)

It's a love story and a drinking story both. Simenon has a positive genius for transforming scenes of boozy low life into a comic mix of poetry and passion.

Maigret has been sent to the Côte d'Azur to investigate the stabbing to death of William Brown. The greatest tact is required because Brown in some unspecified way has important connections.

Brown was living on the Riviera in a modest villa with a woman and her mother. In addition to this unsavory relationship, he leads a second secret life, for a few days every month, drinking himself into oblivion at the Liberty Bar.

Liberty is something Brown seems to have pursued relentlessly since he left his hard-working family and their vast sheep farms in Australia.

Maigret uncovers plenty of suspicious characters: the two dubious ladies who form Brown's untidy household, the two delightfully disreputable women who drink with him, the sleazy casino waiter, the coldly efficient Brown son visiting from Australia.

It so happens that William Brown looked a bit like Maigret, a moving discovery for the chief inspector. Maigret, like Brown, is hard pressed to take anything seriously in this land of shimmering sunshine and mimosa-scented breezes.

I wish the present-day writers of bestsellers would study Simenon. Every sentence of this little book is perfect. The plot is sparely told, the all-too-human characters deeply understood.

3.0 out of 5 stars Murder in a warm climate, February 20, 2010

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Blue in Washington "Barry Ballow" (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Maigret on the Riviera (Paperback)

One of Simenon's short Maigret-on-the-road novels in which the Superintendent of the Paris Judiciary Police is dispatched to Antibes to discreetly investigate the murder of an Australian who has had connections to the French Intelligence Agency but who has been more recently living the life of a social dropout i.e. women, booze and relaxation in the sun. Maigret, also finds himself succumbing to the languid southern climate and finds it hard to concentrate on the crime. Eventually, however, he finds that he is dealing with four women who were in orbit around the murder victim, but who had no obvious motives for killing him. As is often the case in Simenon stories, the basest of human motives proves to be the reason for the crime--in this case, one of passion.

This short tale is loaded with red (and pink) herrings, moving pretty slowly toward denouement. The author's narrative is as evocative of place as always, and the reader really gets the feel of the Cote d'Azur and its seductive and corrosive effect on ambition and energy. At the same time, it's very fuzzy on time period--written in 1940, but some references don't match the date clearly. The later translation may have been purposely updated. Perhaps not the strongest of Simeon's many Maigret books, but entertaining enough.