Simenon

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30094, 30 March 1963, Page 3

Simenon

Account Unsettled. By Simenon. Hamish Hamilton. 159 pp. Elie, a student, poor, ugly and friendless, feels that he has found a haven in Madame Lange’s boarding house in Liege. He is not capable of great affection but is tolerated. by his landlady and the other lodgers, and he takes great interest in Louise, Madame’s sickly daughter. But into his Eden comes the serpent in the shape of a rich young Rumanian, Michel Zograffi who becomes Madame’s pet as he is a full boarder. The whole household pivots around Michel, to Elie’s disgust, and he himself refuses Michel’s overtures of friendship. But his indifference turns to a jealous disgust when he discovers, by spying through a keyhole, that Michel and Louise are having an affair. Adding to his hatred is the fact that he suspects Michel of knowing his presence and deliberately taunting him with Louise. Half-mad, Elie meets and shoots Michel on a foggy night, fails to kill him and flees.

Twenty-six years later, in the heat of a mining city in Arizona. Elie, along with other employees, tensely awaits the arrival of the new owner in whose hands their future lies. He comes—and he is Michel. What will he do? And the author ingeniously twists the ending of his tale. As ever Mr Simenon has contrived to make the reader enter closely into the lives of his characters, and to feel with them the heat, the cold, the fear and the ever-present suspense. This is a thriller with a difference. Maigret’s Failure. By Simenon. Hamish Hamilton. 153 pp. On a wet grey morning Ferdinand Fumal, the fat. rich owner of a chain of butcher’s shops came to Superintendent Maigret to complain that his life was in danger and to demand protection. Knowing well that personal feelings should not enter into his work. Maigret cannot overcome his dislike for this old schoolfellow and rather half-heartedly orders a man to watch Fumal's house, but under his nose the avaricious butcher is shot dead. Blaming himselfbitterly. Maigret starts to unravel the threads which will lead him to the murderer, but he is appalled to find that almost everyone in touch with Fumal—his wife, valet, secretary and her lover, his drunken brother-in-law, the shifty lawyer Monsieur Joseph—had reason to hate, despise, and fear the fart butcher. Early in the investigation Maigret’s chief suspect, a man, ruined by Fumal. is found dead. Though entangled in the web of malice and hate woven round Fumal, Maigret, heartsick and full of a sense of failure, eventually reaches his goal. As usual Mr Simenon has been entirely successful in his portrayal of atmosphere and personalities and this unusually despondent Maigret remains as formidable as ever. A Maigret Omnibus. By Georges Simenon. Hamish Hamilton. 626 pp. The work of a writer as prolific as Simenon must necessarily vary in quality, and of the five novels which comprise this collection the last, “Maigret Goes to School” is easily the best. Underworld characters in Paris figure largely i n the first two, entitled respectively "Maigret in Montmarte" and “Maigret’s Mistake." In the first a strip-tease dancgt is strangled after disclosing to the police that a “Countess" living in Montmartre is about to be murdered tor her jewels. The girl is too late to avert a second murder, but Maigret succeeds in discovering the killer of both women. In “Maigret’s Mistake" the great detective* follows a wrong scent in tracking down the murderer of a prostitute who has been established in a luxury flat by a rich protector. In “Maigret has Scruples,” a husband and wife, each of them suspicious of the other, approach the detective for protection against the machinations of the other. In all three of these novels police interrogations are carried to tedious lengths which detract from the reader’s interest, but the author recovers his form in “Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses” which is good

family-feud material. Several members of the Lachaume family live in a decaying mansion, which, like their biscuit-manufacturing business, had once been prosperous. Only marriage to rich women has saved the firm’s finances from foundering and when one of the partners is found shot dead in his room Maigret is faced by mass opposition to his investigations by the entire household. As he suspects, however, the crime proves to be an inside job. and not a burglary as has been assiduously suggested. ’’Maigret Goes to School" is a clever study of French rustic psychology. A malevolent old woman living in a small village in the Charentes is shot dead through the window of her cottage by a bullet from a boy's airgun. Nobody regrets her death, but the blame for it is ascribed to the schoolmaster, who is not a local man. The solution of this mystery is neat, and entirely in character with rural methods of reasoning. The translations are by Daphne Woodward and Alan Hodge respectively, and are competent. though French idiom is almost impossible to equate with colloquial English.