Maigret and the Man on the Bench

I have come to enjoy these lovely stories by Georges Simenon in the fine translations provided by Ellen Ellenbogen. This is the third mystery novel of Inspector Maigret that I have read and I must admit that I have become ever increasingly interested in the character of Maigret, that is to say how he works, his observations about life, his habits at the Brasserie Dauphine, etc.. While the situation around the specific case is always interesting, I find that I am drawn more towards Maigret's conversations with the suspects and with his own colleagues. The descriptions of the Paris environs always make me think back on my own walks through the streets of that noble city and will give any reader a nice sense of the small town feel of many of Paris' arrondisements. The mystery is fine...but stay for the deeper story.

Simenon is said to have described his stories as sketches, somewhat like preliminary drawings by an artist. This is not to say that the Maigret mysteries are unfinished, but that they perhaps lack decorative elements. However, this particular story - Maigret and the Man on the Bench - has a noticeably abrupt ending that does suggest a somewhat hurried conclusion. Nonetheless, Maigret and the Man on the Bench offers continual surprises and will appeal to Maigret's fans. Maigret and the Man on the Bench reminds me of an early Sherlock Holmes mystery, The Man with the Twisted Lip, a tale of an apparently successful businessman, Mr. Neville St. Clair, that secretly poses as a beggar as he is in actuality unemployed. Similarly, Maigret's latest case involves a murder victim that is recognized as a man that was often seen sitting for hours on a public bench. His family proves unaware that he had lost his job a year earlier. What has been the source of his substantial income? Maigret slowly peels back each layer of this puzzle, revealing a double life, duplicity, blackmail, theft, and murder. The sudden twist in the final section is disconcerting, even though such events do occur in actual investigations. Perhaps Simenon assumed that the astute reader would have considered this possibility (or something similar) as all other leads had proved untenable. Maigret and the Man on the Bench was published in France in 1953, but was not available in English until 1975.

A man is found knifed in a Paris Alley. He is wearing "goose dung" brown shoes and not the black shoes he had on when he left home for work that morning. Thus begins "Maigret and the Man on the Bench". During the long career of Georges Simenon, he published more than 200 novels and had more than 500 million copies of his books in print. When Georges Simenon is on, his Maigret stories are simply brilliant. When he is not at his best, the novels are merely good. This is a good novel that I would recommend for devotees of the Maigret mystery novels. I would not recommend the book for a first time Maigret reader. There are better novels with which to become aquainted with the venerable Jules Maigret.