Maigret, Lognon and the gangsters

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Maigret, Lognon and the Gangsters (French: Maigret, Lognon et les gangsters ) is a crime novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It is the 39th novel in a series of 75 novels and 28 short stories about Detective Superintendent Maigret and was written from October 1 to 8, 1951 in Lakeville , Connecticut . The book was published in February of the following year by the Paris publisher Presses de la Cité , while the magazine La Revue des Deux Mondes published the novel under the title Maigret et les gangsters in 5 episodes from March 15 to May 15, 1952. The first German translation by Hermann Schreiber was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in 1954 under the title Maigret und die Gangster . In 1981 Diogenes Verlag published the new translation Maigret, Lognon and the gangsters by Wolfram Schäfer.

Ironically, the unfortunate Inspector Lognon alias "Inspector Curmudgeon" (whom Simenon had introduced with the Maigret story of the same name from 1946 ) accidentally stumbles upon a gang of American gangsters who have been going unabashedly in and out of his apartment since then. When Commissioner Maigret took over the investigation, he received warnings from all sides not to mess with professional killers, whom he was unable to cope with with his amateurish methods. But it is precisely these warnings that really fuel the Commissioner's ambition.

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Notre-Dame-de-Lorette in Paris

It's Thursday, November 19th, and a cold, pre-winter rain is falling over Paris . Madame Lognon, the always ailing and insufferable wife of Inspector Lognon, who is generally known only as "Inspector curmudgeon" due to his ostentatious misfortune, calls the Quai des Orfèvres . Her husband hasn't been home for two days; but that night a gang of American gangsters broke into her apartment for the second time and searched it without worrying about her presence.

When Commissioner Maigret Lognon quotes to his office, the inspector meekly admits that he had gone on extra tours again in the hope of solving a major case. Two days ago, during surveillance at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, he happened to witness a lifeless man being thrown from a car onto the curb. He left the scene to alert a police patrol, but when he returned the supposed dead person was gone. Without informing his colleagues, Lognon found the owner of the car, an American fraudster named Bill Larner, who has lived in Paris for several years. But his research did not go unnoticed; several gangsters searched his apartment for the body, whereupon Lognon hid in a boarding house.

By calling Jimmy MacDonald, the right-hand man of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in Washington , whom the French inspector knows from his study trip to the USA, Maigret learns the identity of the two criminals: the former professional boxer Charlie Cinaglia is a notorious killer and Tony Cicero his accomplice and spokesman. Both embarked from St. Louis just a few days ago and are looking in Paris for another American gangster named "Sloppy Joe" Mascarelli, who has gone into hiding in the French metropolis. To do this, they use their compatriot Larner, who compared to the two killers is only a small fish. Not only MacDonald, but also the Italian-born bartenders Pozzo and Luigi asked Maigret to understand that he shouldn't mess with American gangsters who are a size too big for the French commissioner. This awakens the ambition in Maigrets to prove to his colleagues from overseas that the methods of the French police are not to be despised either.

Racecourse in Maisons-Laffitte

In the course of the investigation, Maigret's inspectors received evidence of the harshness of the American gangsters several times: The unfortunate Lognon was kidnapped during an observation and brutally beaten, and Inspector Nicolas was shot down in the stomach when he was arrested. Finally, the "Baron", an insider of the betting environment in the service of the police, the Commissioner leads to track down the criminals who are in an American hostel near the Racecourse of Maisons-Laffitte hiding. Together with his inspectors Torrence and Lucas, Maigret overwhelms Cinaglia and Cicero. Larner had previously withdrawn from the influence of his two compatriots.

Another American named Harry Pills, who stayed in the background throughout the case, turns out to be assistant to the District Attorney of St. Louis. He is the man who picked up the seriously injured Mascarelli in front of the Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, whom Cinaglia and Cicero were supposed to kill on behalf of an American gang of gangsters in order to prevent his testimony as a key witness in a pending trial. Since then he has looked after the important witness until he is able to return home and hides him from the access of the French authorities. Maigret is furious that American gangsters and police officers are uninhibited and settle their bills on foreign soil. But he gets to know Pills better over a drink, and in the end the two very different investigators speak on terms. When Maigret went to bed with a cold, he did so knowing that he had shown it to his American colleagues.

background

In the early 1950s, Georges Simenon was in the middle of one of his most productive phases as a writer. After moving to the USA following the Second World War , he settled in Lakeville , Connecticut , where between five and six books, alternating between Maigret and Non-Maigret novels, were written each year. Maigret, Lognon and the Gangsters was the third Maigret novel in which Simenon contrasted his own reality in the new world with the environment of his famous Parisian commissioner in old Europe.

According to Murielle Wenger, Simenon settled his personal account with the adopted home USA in three acts: Maigret in New York confronts the commissioner with the US metropolis and a collection of American clichés . Maigret in Arizona shows a greater depth of the land, but in Maigret it also arouses an impulse to flee for the first time. Maigret, Lognon and the gangsters finally lets the inspector triumph over his colleagues from overseas. This time it is not Maigret who comes to America, but America who visits him in his native Paris. The last name of the American public prosecutor builds a bridge to a well-known French singer of the time: Jacques Pills .

interpretation

Maigret, Lognon and the Gangster shows a rare subject in the body of the Maigret series, that of gang crime . Organized violent criminals who make unrestrained use of their firearms can only be found in a few of Simenon's novels, such as Maigret and his dead . According to Murielle Wenger, Simenon makes use of numerous set pieces from American gangster films , from the descriptions of the killers, the slang expressions , the investigations in bars to the exciting arrest in a remote inn. Even the usually sympathetic Maigret takes over the "tough methods" of his opponents and pocket his revolver when the final showdown comes. He gets so furious that he forgets himself and abuses one of the killers. According to Stanley G. Eskin, the violent ending is in the best " hard-boiled " tradition.

Maigret takes the case personally when he senses that he is being looked down on and that his opponents think a size too big for the French commissioner. In this case, Tilman Spreckelsen out that the resistant intimidating than "killer" designated criminal in truth commit just a murder. The case, however, brings Maigret physically and mentally to its limits. The inspector is particularly disturbed by the unrestrained behavior of the American gangsters in Paris, as if they were in their own backyard. Maigret almost seems to lose control of his familiar milieu, but in the battle of two worlds it is he who triumphs over the invading Americans. It is precisely his ability to put himself in the shoes of his opponents that enables him to adapt their methods. In the end he saved “the honor of the French police”, and Tilman Spreckelsen wonders whether the Belgian author sometimes felt very similar to his inspector in a strange America.

According to Murielle Wenger, the novel continually contrasts hard and comical elements. This applies to Madame Lognon's appearance at the beginning of the novel as well as to the drunken “Baron” at the end, from whom Maigret has to laboriously elicit the dramatic events of the previous evening. First and foremost, however, it is “Inspector curmudgeon” who provides the tragicomic note. Even at the sight of the bandaged and battered Lognon, Maigret can't bite a smile. The inspector recognizes that the inspector, who has irregular appearances in the Maigret series, wears his nickname “curmudgeon” like a mask that he needs for his self-image: “He wanted to lament and growl and to feel like the most unhappy person in the world. ”According to Josef Quack, Lognon is an embodiment of the belief in fate that Simenon repeatedly shows in his novels. Typologically it stands for "all who choose their own unhappiness."

reception

Publishers Weekly saw in Maigret, Lognon and the Gangster the "dreaded Maigret" challenged by an international criminal syndicateoperatingin Montmartre . Marine de Tilly reada “really good Maigret according to all the rules of the art”at Le Point . The first hundred pages are “excellent”, the investigation “simple and effective”, the staff “strong” and the atmosphere “classic”, with the devil being felt on every page. For Kirkus Review, however, the ravages of time gnawed at the novel. The action is measured by Simenon's standards "shallow", and despite some comedic interludes such as Lognon's clumsiness and Maigret's disdain for "American macho poses", it is an "insignificant, third-rate Maigret".

For the literary magazine Welt und Wort , Maigret, Lognon and the gangsters, as well as Madame Maigret's girlfriend, were “told in a clean and exciting way”. Particular emphasis was placed on “the enlivening of a typically French milieu achieved with scarce resources” and the art of “bringing the individually human to the fore”. Hans Reimann judged: “Maigret, as always, lets things come closer. Drink beer and smoke a pipe. "The novel is" little ado about almost nothing. [...] Loin lame! "

The novel was filmed three times. In 1963 Jean Gabin played the leading role in the French movie Maigret voit rouge (German: Kommissar Maigret sees red ) directed by Gilles Grangier . In addition, two episodes of the television series with Rupert Davies (Great Britain, 1961) and Jean Richard (France, 1977) were created based on Simenon's novel .

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: Maigret, Lognon et les gangsters . Presses de la Cité, Paris 1952 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the gangsters . Translation: Hermann Schreiber . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1954.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the gangsters . Translation: Hermann Schreiber. Heyne, Munich 1966.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret, Lognon and the gangsters . Translation: Wolfram Schäfer. Diogenes, Zurich 1981, ISBN 3-257-20812-X .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret, Lognon and the gangsters . Complete Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 39. Translation: Wolfram Schäfer. Diogenes, Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-257-23839-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographie de Georges Simenon 1946 à 1967 on Toutesimenon.com, the website of Omnibus Verlag.
  2. ↑ Maigret, Lognon et les gangsters in the Maigret bibliography by Yves Martina.
  3. ↑ Oliver Hahn: Bibliography of German-language editions . In: Georges-Simenon-Gesellschaft (Ed.): Simenon-Jahrbuch 2003 . Wehrhahn, Laatzen 2004, ISBN 3-86525-101-3 , pp. 65-66.
  4. ↑ a b c d e Maigret of the Month: Maigret, Lognon et les Gangsters (Inspector Maigret and the Killers / Maigret and the Gangsters) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  5. ↑ Maigret of the Month: Maigret chez le coroner (Maigret at the Coroner's) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  6. ↑ Stephen F. Noreiko: Maigret . In: Bill Marshall (Ed.): France and the Americas. Culture, Politics, and History . ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara 2005, ISBN 1-85109-411-3 , p. 752.
  7. ↑ Lucille F. Becker: Georges Simenon . House, London 2006, ISBN 1-904950-34-5 , p. 51.
  8. ↑ Maigret's first name - Maigret and firearms on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  9. ↑ Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, ISBN 3-8260-2014-6 , p. 55.
  10. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography. Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , p. 400.
  11. ^ A b Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret-Marathon 39: Lognon and the gangsters . On FAZ.net from January 13, 2009.
  12. ^ Georges Simenon: Maigret, Lognon and the gangsters . Diogenes, Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-257-23839-6 , pp. 40-41.
  13. ↑ Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, ISBN 3-8260-2014-6 , pp. 68-69.
  14. ↑ "redoubtable Maigret pitted against international crime syndicate operating in Montmartre." Quoted from: Publishers Weekly Volume 186, 1964, p. 152.
  15. ↑ "un vrai bon Maigret dans les règles de l'art: cent excellentes premières pages, une enquête simple et efficace, des personnages forts, et cette atmosphere 'vintage' en diable palpable à chaque page." Quoted from: Marine de Tilly: Maigret, Lognon and the gangsters . In: Le Point of August 9, 2010.
  16. ↑ "especially since the plot is such a shallow one by Simenon standards [...] Despite some mild comedy (Lognon's ineptitude, Maigret's scorn for American macho posturing): minor, third-string Maigret." Quoted from: Maigret and the Gangsters by Georges Simenon at Kirkus Reviews .
  17. ↑ Welt und Wort Volume 12. Heliopolis, Tübingen 1957, p. 118.
  18. ↑ Hans Reimann : The Literazzia. Volume 4. Pohl, Munich 1955, p. 135.
  19. ↑ Maigret Films & TV on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.