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Le Commissaire Maigret
Police Judiciaire
36 Quai des Orfèvres
Paris...The Maigret Forum This is not a static website. It changes almost daily. The Maigret "Forum," an open bulletin board for notices, opinions, information and discussion related to Maigret and Simenon, has become the most active feature of this site. It's where new books, websites, articles and features are first announced and displayed, and includes an indexed archive of the entire past Forum... back to 1997!
Click here for the current Forum.
Here's a recent sample -
Maigret of the Month: Monsieur Lundi (Mr. Monday)
8/21/10 –
Monsieur Lundi was the Cremer tv episode, Maigret chez le docteur (Maigret at the Doctor's)1. After Montmartre, Neuilly...
Considering the stories written by Simenon relating Maigret's cases, it is striking to note to what extent the author describes a significant number of different social milieus, as if he'd wanted to plunge his Chief Inspector each time into a different ambiance, having him "make a tour" of all imaginable microcosms. And it's even more interesting that, if he effectively provided his character with an impressive voyage into all the levels of society, the voyage is spread out, in the novels, across a great number of years. While in the majority of these stories, this same voyage is in a sense, resumed, but gathered into the two or three years (1936-1938) of their writing.
In this story, after one about a barge (pen), a ménage à trois (bea), and one of vengeance (fen), this time Maigret goes to investigate in a "chic" milieu of the capital, the Neuilly district. We will see him, in the stories which follow, going to other, very different environments, like, for example, a border train station (arr), a "tough-guy" bistro (pig), and a family boarding house (man), among so many others.
The milieu of the bourgeoisie of fashionable districts is clearly not, we suspect, one where Maigret feels most at ease, no more than that of the notables of small provincial cities. In this regard, we can consider the beginning of this story...
"Maigret stood a moment before the black metal gate... In front of him, on the other hand, beyond the gate, was a small, modern Neuilly residence... with its elegance, its comfort... It is always troublesome to disturb the life of a quiet house... all the more so when the intruder comes from the Quai des Orfèvres, his pockets filled with unpleasant documents.... The foyer was elegant, and Maigret had mechanically stuffed his pipe into his pocket."
The same attitude of discomfort, and the same reaction of the Chief Inspector, when he goes to the Deligeards', in Bayeux (bay)...
"Maigret finished his pipe while regarding with a bemused eye the vast gray house, the porte cochère with its copper ring, the main courtyard with its bronze candelabras. It was what he called a "pipeless case", which is to say, an investigation which unfolds in locations where the Chief Inspector couldn't decently keep his pipe clenched in his mouth.... "This'll be fun!" he sighed, tapping at last the bowl of his pipe against his heel."
Nonetheless, in spite of the uneasiness he feels, as always, the Chief Inspector can't resist the temptation to go and "sniff up" the atmosphere, to go nosing about in the affairs of others, in this case of the "better" class... The kind of restraint Maigret feels in the face of certain milieus ("high society"), a restraint retained from his childhood passed in the shadow of a château, never impedes him, in spite of everything, from pursuing his investigations to the final truth...
2. A short synopsis of the story
To reduce it to a single sentence, this story could be titled, "The doctor, the beggar and the hysterical madwoman", in a word, the story of a woman madly in love, literally, to the extent that her passion leads to murder, a crime of madness, attempting to reach the one who had rejected her by harming those he holds dear. Using the subterfuge of the beggar, she concocts her crime with cruel sophistication, taking the risk of even killing the innocents... not only the children of the doctor, but whomever might buy these poisoned cakes from the bakery, and so it was the young maid who paid with her life for the madness of Miss Wilfur...
3. Maigret and doctors
The first two characters Maigret meets in this story are, on the one hand, the doctor's chauffeur, Martin Vignolet, and on the other, a doctor, Dr. Barion. These are two types of characters that Maigret often encounters, and here I'd like to make a little tour of the corpus to summarize them.
We'll consider first the doctors. The best-known doctor in the corpus is, of course, Maigret's friend, Dr. Pardon. I won't repeat here the analysis of the subject I've already taken up elsewhere. We recognize the special relationship Maigret maintains with medicine, a discipline which he would perhaps have pursued if it hadn't been for the interruption of his studies by the death of his father. Maigret explains about this in Maigret's Memoirs [MEM], on the role played in his life by the story of Dr. Gadelle. And if Maigret may not practice the medicine of the body, he has nonetheless become, in a way, a "doctor of the soul"...
complete article
original FrenchMurielle Wenger
A phenomenal author and his phenomenal character
Georges Simenon was by many standards the most successful author of the 20th century, and the character he created, Inspector Jules Maigret, who made him rich and famous, ranks only after Sherlock Holmes as the world's best known fictional detective. There is nothing commonplace about the life of Georges Simenon, and he and his works have been the subject of innumerable books and articles. The Maigret stories are unlike any other detective stories — the crime and the details of unraveling it are often less central to our interest than Maigret's journey through the discovery of the cast of characters... towards an understanding of man. Simenon said he was obsessed with a search for the "naked man" — man without his cultural protective coloration, and he followed his quest as much in the Maigrets as in his "hard" novels.
Steve TrusselThis site, first opened on August 29, 1996 as "Inspector Maigret," has spread in various directions from its beginning as primarily a bibliography of editions in English. The "new look" reflects various aspects of this development, but the bibliography remains a central feature.
Counting Maigret: statistics etc.For the forty-year period from 1931 through 1972, a new Inspector Maigret investigation appeared at the average rate about 2.5 per year: 75 novels and 28 short stories, 103 episodes of what has been called George Simenon's "Maigret Saga."
Full-length texts - reviews and articles about Maigret and Simenon, as well as new translations of stories, articles, (and even a novel!) which have never appeared in English.
Index to the texts and articles on various pages.
Articles from the Simenon symposiums, journals, program listings, and other not-Maigret-only Simenon material.
Gallery: Maigret covers and photos
Maigret paperback covers, postage stamps, theme music, locations... more.
Plots of all the Maigret novels and stories.
Shopping for Maigret: books on-line
The one-button, quick-links to the main on-line book dealers are still available, for shopping for Maigret titles.
Maigret on Screen: films and videos
Various aspects of Maigret on film and video.
Links to the rest of the on-line world of Maigret on the Internet.
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