Mini reviews #28

Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses (1959) by Georges Simenon. This entertaining short novel sees Maigret two years from retirement and pitted against a young proactive and self-important magistrate. The plot is not particularly interesting, but the sheer vitriol directed towards the magistrate and the generational shift he represents makes Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses well worth a read. There is also a nice insight into Maigret’s investigative techniques, as he persuades a very close-lipped family to talk simply by ‘bombarding them with questions’. My edition translated by Daphne Woodward.

City of Gold and Shadows (1973) by Ellis Peters. I really can’t get into Ellis Peters. I like some of her short stories, and after realising that the only novels of hers I’d tried to read were Cadfaels, I thought I’d have ago at a different one. City of Gold and Shadows has an irresistible set up, especially to a fan of Agatha Christie. Charlotte, whose archaeologist great-uncle has disappeared, sets out to an excavation site in Wales to find out what happened. When she stumbles upon a murder mystery with its roots in the Roman empire, she kind of gets out of the way so a male police inspector can magically turn up and investigate it. The mystery aspect is confident enough. The dialogue and thematic considerations are boring.

Dead Beat (1992) by Val McDermid. The first Kate Brannigan novel is an easy read and interesting mainly for showing how McDermid has evolved as a writer. Here, she wears her influences on her sleeve, and the book feels like an Agatha Christie story retold by a young Sara Paretsky. Brannigan goes looking for a missing song-writer and ends up in the seedier parts of both Leeds and the music industry. The format, though, is more conventional whodunit than gritty noir. It is an interesting midway point between the light and breezy (but morally assertive) Report for Murder, which I reviewed earlier this year, and McDermid’s contemporary thrillers, which are urgent and powerful but conservative enough to sit comfortably in the mainstream.

The Anarchists’ Club (2019) by Alex Reeve. Recently, I joined an online book club called Pigeonhole. It’s a really nice idea: you get new books in daily chunks (they call them ‘staves’, not entirely ‘getting’ why Dickens called instalments of A Christmas Carol the same thing) and can discuss them with other readers in comments on the margins. The first book I completed through Pigeonhole was The Anarchists’ Club. And I was very happy to be introduced to this novel, the detective Leo Stanhope, and the author Alex Reeve. The book is set in Victorian London and the really original aspect is that Leo, our hero, is transgender. It’s always shocked me that there aren’t any mainstream trans detectives and I was so happy to see the issue handled so sensitively, even if it is in a slightly glossed neo-Victorian setting. I didn’t enjoy this as much as I should have, because I was spoilt by reading an excellent novel on Pigeonhole at the same time, and I kept comparing them, which wasn’t constructive. I also hadn’t realised when I started that this was the second in a series, but all the key plot points from the first book were nicely explained, so that wasn’t really a barrier.  The real frustration for me — and sorry if this sounds awful — was the comments from other readers! People just can’t get their head round pronouns; it’s remarkable how much Leo’s struggles for basic life continue beyond the page. Leo is trying to keep a low profile and just get by, but he keeps stepping into the limelight by accident. This time, it’s because a woman is murdered and he is the only one who seems to care about looking after her fatherless children. The story is atmospheric and gripping, taking us from the low alleys of London to aristocratic country seats, via the music hall and a couple of meetings with Vesta Tilley. The topic of eugenics is dealt with intelligently and accessibly. I’m glad that Alex Reeve is writing.

The Language of Birds (2019) by Jill Dawson. Jill Dawson is one of the masters of literary genre fiction. She knows better than anyone else how to find an episode of history full of transcontextual human interest and to weave literary magic out of it. Her novel Wild Boy, about Victor of Aveyron, was the second novel I studied at university and every now and then I get fascinated in a subject — the Thompson-Bywaters case, Patricia Highsmith’s time in England — only to discover that Dawson has written an excellent novel about it. Her latest book is about the untold story of the nanny murdered by Lord Lucan, although the story uses fictional characters and settings to tell the tale. I wondered if this was because there are people — innocent, hurt people — who survived the scandal and are still living. According to the author’s afterword, which tells the true story explicitly, that is indeed the case. Nonetheless, the dialogue in the inquest scene is taken verbatim. The whole story is touching, expertly-written, and unsettling. In many ways, given that the Lord Lucan story is so well-known, reading it felt like re-reading a mystery novel: we already know the solution and how it ends, but we are spotting this we missed the first time. This is evident both in ‘clues’, for want of a better word: the nanny and the lady of the house look so similar, we keep getting told … But it’s also a masterful exercise in refocussing our attention onto a figure who is too often consigned in history to the rank of collateral damage.

The Madman of Bergerac by Georges Simenon

A short while ago, I did some last-minute cover teaching for a university course on crime fiction. Glancing through the syllabus, I noticed a good selection of novels, but one entry particularly caught my eye. ‘Any Agatha Christie novel’. Eyes widening in horror, I huffed my disapproval. They’re not all the same! Agatha Christie was the finest crime novelist of all time, each of her best books a masterpiece on its own merits. And so on. I sternly put the class right on this point, and that was that.

Now, this week, I’m guest lecturing on another crime fiction programme at a different university. After glancing at the handbook, I had a chat with the module convenor and found myself asking, ‘So, they’ve read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and a Georges Simenon so far?’ The convenor replied in the affirmative, politely naming the Simenon, The Madman of Bergerac (1932), in the process. In that moment, I realised that I was as bad a hypocrite as anyone in the House of Commons (okay, my hypocrisy doesn’t actually kill people, but it was pretty devastating). I was thinking of Simenon’s entire output – famously written in haste – as homogeneous; every title as interchangeable.

I’ve never quite gotten on with Simenon. People say he has a commanding psychological intensity; that his prose is laconic and insightful. I’ve always thought it felt poorly-plotted and unlovingly executed. I’ve read about five over the years, and not enjoyed any before. Nonetheless, determined to check my prejudice, I gave The Madman of Bergerac (first published in French as Les trois morts de Bergerac) a read. And I decided to examine it with fresh, objective eyes.

It was enjoyable enough. I liked Maigret very much, with his quirky subterfuges and bloody-minded curiosity. He has a very clever trick in interrogations of

 jumping from one subject to another and suddenly talking about things that have nothing to do with the conversation. […] The other person, fearing a trap, tries to guess at an ulterior motive when there isn’t one.

The idea is that they slowly grow frustrated and bored, and then answer the real questions truthfully by rote. And I liked the long-suffering, hen-pecking Madame Maigret, too. Going by the titles of later books in the series, she seems to feature a lot, which makes me happy. Their dynamic reminds me a tiny, tiny bit of Rumpole and Hilda, but Frenchified.

The novel begins with Maigret travelling on a train, determined to get a break after a particularly unpleasant case. But when a passenger jumps from the moving train not far off the railway station, Maigret’s curiosity is peaked to such an extent that he also jumps. Then he (Maigret) is shot. He wakes up in hospital and finds himself under official suspicion of being ‘the Madman of Bergerac’, a homicidal maniac terrorising young women in that seemingly respectable commune.

The locals remain suspicious of Maigret, because he comes from outside of Bergerac, and they cannot face the idea that the killer could be an insider. After all, as one character puts it, ‘[o]ne would understand if it had happened in Paris, where vice is endemic … but here!’  But all is not as it seems: one of the first things Maigret notices is a complete lack of prostitution. So, of course, he asks the Chief Prosecutor, ‘what do you do around here for love?’, because he believes – correctly, as it turns out – that it’s impossible to have a place, however serene, without a sex industry.

Simenon’s Bergerac, then, is no St Mary’s Mead, and while the locals are busy suspecting Maigret, he, in his turn, casts a suspicious eye on citizens in positions of power. He only starts to make progress in his case when he asks a pretty obvious question: ‘suppose [the police] stopped looking for a madman? Suppose they simply looked for a logical explanation of the chain of events?’

There are some fabulous turns of phrases that give us lovely insights into character and circumstance. For example, when Maigret exhales a lungful of cigar smoke, it rises above his head ‘in the shape of a halo’; a ‘very petty bourgeois’ woman wears ‘clothes […] made by a local seamstress, or, if they did come from a good fashion house, she didn’t know how to wear them.’

One thing that was particularly – umm – noticeable was the overuse! of! exclamation! marks! I’m not sure if this is the translator’s initiative, because I don’t remember it from other Simenon titles, but I found it highly distracting. There are about eight on each page! I also didn’t care much for Simenon’s plotting. I’ve heard that he just dashed these off with a pipe and a bottle, and perhaps that shows. There’s an element of throwing things into a pot and moulding them together. But it’s fine. I did find the story interesting. I am, however, glad it wasn’t longer.

The novel is, in all, a nice take-down of rural respectability. I enjoyed it more than I expected to, but I’ll have forgotten all about it in a month.

Mini reviews #10

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson. Ian Rankin considers this a detective novel -- and the best one ever written -- so it belongs here. I would call it a gothic novel, and rather old-fashioned for its time, although incredibly accessible. It's a beautifully crafted and blatantly important novel. We all know the story but, I think, 99% of readers will stay engaged from beginning to end.

The Bar on the Seine (1931) by Georges Simenon. An extremely enjoyable and astute novel which begins with a conversation between Maigret and a man he has captured, who is facing the death penalty. It's the kind of book you read quickly, forget quickly, and remember bit by bit.

Rogue Male (1939) by Geoffrey Household. My goodness, some men need to get over themselves.

And Then There Was No One (2009) by Gilbert Adair. Without a doubt, objectively and unquestionably, the best postmodern detective novel of all time. But don't just read this one -- read the whole Evadne Mount trilogy.

A Study in Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes (2011) edited by Joseph R.G. DeMarco. This is a collection of short stories, focussing on the central Sherlock Holmes characters from a variety of LGBTQIA perspectives. The stories range in quality quite dramatically, and I think the best is Katie Raynes' 'The Kidnapping of Alice Braddon'.