Maigret and the informer

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Maigret and the Spy (French: Maigret et l'indicateur ) is a crime novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It is the 74th novel in a series of 75 novels and 28 short stories about the detective Maigret . The novel was written from June 5 to 11, 1971 in Epalinges and was published in October of that year by the Paris publisher Presses de la Cité . The first German translation by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau was published in 1975 by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in an anthology with Maigret and the lonely as well as Maigret and Monsieur Charles . In 1990, Diogenes Verlag published a new translation by Inge Giese.

When a prominent restaurant owner is shot dead, Inspector Maigret takes over the investigation. It soon turns out that the deceased not only had a criminal past, but that he was still in contact with the criminal community. While the young and beautiful widow of the dead man gives the inspector the cold shoulder, it is a call from an informant who leads Maigret on the first clue.

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Avenue Junot in the 18th arrondissement
Rue Fontaine (now Rue Pierre-Fontaine) in the 9th arrondissement

It is a warm May in Paris . After a sociable evening with his friend Dr. Sorry, Inspector Maigret is called to Montmartre in the middle of the night , where a man's body was found on Avenue Junot. It is Maurice Marcia, a former brothel owner who had risen to high society and ran the well-known Sardine restaurant on Rue Fontaine, without ever having completely cut ties with the Parisian underworld. It soon becomes clear that the place where the body was found was not the scene of the crime, but that Monsieur Maurice was first shot and then put down in the secluded side street.

Maigret gets to know Marcias widow Line, a former night club dancer who is barely half the age of her late husband and who is cold and condescending towards the inspector. Then a long-time anonymous informant of the dutiful inspector Louis from the 9th arrondissement accuses the brothers Manuel and Jo Mori, two crooks of the young generation who are suspected of being responsible for a series of robberies on empty castles and properties in the vicinity of Paris. It turns out that Manuel is Mori Line's lover. At Maurice's funeral in Bandol , the two of them no longer bother to hide their liaison, and the Moris soon take over command of the sardine . But the savvy criminals deny any involvement in the murder. Instead, they let their accomplices hunt down the treacherous informant, whom Maigret unmasked as Justin Crotton, a bustling petty criminal who is generally known only as a "flea" because of his height of almost 150 centimeters.

After Maigret has tracked down the “flea” that has gone into hiding on Montmartre, he arrests the Moris and Lise and summons them to the Quai des Orfèvres . With the future in prison in mind, the lovers soon accuse each other with hatred. The truth also comes to light about the robbery series: Maurice Marcia was the real brain behind the break-ins carried out by the Mori brothers. But Manuel Mori and Lise had decided to get old Maurice out of the way. With a fake tip from the "flea" they lured him into Manuel's apartment on Square La Bruyère. When he jealously threatened his rival there, he was shot with Manuel's pistol. Then he called his brother to get the body aside. Whether Manuel or Lise fired the fatal shots cannot be clarified even before the jury. In the end, both were sentenced to twenty years in prison, and Jo Mori was sentenced to five years for aiding and abetting murder. The informer Justin Crotton, on the other hand, will continue to provide Inspector Louis with information from criminal circles.

interpretation

The Diogenes Verlag describes Maigret and the spy : “A tough Maigret novel and yet permeated by the typical café atmosphere and the warm sun of the Côte d'Azur .” Murielle Wenger finds many typical elements of the Maigret series in the novel: one Fall on Montmartre , streets glistening with rain, the view of the Seine from the inspector's office, visits to the forensic laboratory and good meals that the inspector eats in the Brasserie Dauphine or with his affectionate wife. For Josef Quack, the novel, "which is not set in a crime scene for nothing, [...] contains all the elements of a cool police novel without the burden of lengthy reflections," which are commonly associated with the late phase of the Maigret series. It is also unusual that the inspector pokes himself a revolver at the end as he proceeds to arrest the perpetrators.

Stanley G. Eskin characterizes the title character of Maigret and the Spy : "a good-natured fellow on the edge of the underworld with the funny nickname 'La Puce' (the flea )". Pierre Maury sees in the informer as in his liaison man, Inspector Louis, the central figures that Inspector Maigret, despite all his instinct, must first lead on the right track. For Oliver Hahn, the inspector, who puts all his energy into work after losing his wife and knows his neighborhood, Pigalle , like the back of his hand, is “an extremely likeable figure”. In stark contrast to this are the Mori brothers, whose harshness and arrogance anger the inspector against them, while he usually treats little crooks with a sense of honor, such as in Maigret and the lazy thief, with respect and understanding. Tilman Spreckelsen sees above all the couple of adulterers presented "in all their wretchedness" and contrasted with the marital happiness of the Maigrets: "Seldom has one had so little pity for the guilty as in this novel." For Pierre Maury, the more surprising riddle lies in the role of the "flea", who is a thoroughly contradicting figure. In the end, the question of who was the shooter remains open, but in Maigret's sense both co-perpetrators are equally guilty. In any case, the Commissioner is exhausted after the final interrogation and finally wants to get back to other things.

Emergence

In an interview with Israel Shenker from 1971, the year Maigret and the informers was created , Georges Simenon compared himself to a sponge: when he is not writing, he absorbs life, on pressure he gives it, transformed into ink, again from himself. The preliminary stage of every novel consisted of brief notes, which the writer kept on a brown envelope. There, for example, the Mori brothers were only characterized by their names, ages and places of residence. For a toilet woman named “Yvonne” only the keyword was found: “Breasts”. For the writing process, which was completely intuitive, Simenon tried to isolate himself from all external influences and put himself in the position of the main character of his novel, from whose point of view he reproduced the entire plot. Simenon wrote extremely quickly. Using an eagle search system , he achieved 92 words per minute, which was faster than his secretary. What is particularly noticeable in Maigret and the Spy is the sharp decrease in the number of chapters towards the end. The phenomenon can be found in most of Simenon's novels, which Murielle Wenger summed up as follows: the more exciting the plot, the more condensed the style and the shorter the chapters.

reception

In 1973, Publishers Weekly commented, "It may be treason to say it, but there is a certain uniformity creeping into Simenon's Maigret stories." It is not about the "nice, cozy traces" of the inspector's family life or the meals he consumed that Maigret fans expected and enjoyed. However, a repetition of the draft actions is unmistakable. Simenon used the trick of an anonymous informant who got the case rolling in his work again and again. The American magazine Best Sellers , however, judged: "As usual, the plot is fascinating, the dialogues sharp, the writing style tight." Kirkus Reviews described the few plot elements of the novel as "actually peu de chose" (very little), a "micro swab", Mastering Maigret as expected and doing justice to his name.

The novel was filmed in 1979 as part of the French TV series Les Enquêtes du Commissaire Maigret . Directed by Yves Allégret . The title role played Jean Richard .

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: Maigret et le tueur . Presses de la Cité, Paris 1971 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the spy. Maigret and the lonely . Maigret and Monsieur Charles . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1975, ISBN 3-462-01039-5 .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the spy . Translation: Inge Giese. Diogenes, Zurich 1990, ISBN 3-257-21803-6 .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the spy . All Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 74. Translation: Inge Giese. Diogenes, Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-257-23874-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographie de Georges Simenon 1968 à 1989 ( Memento of the original from October 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on Toutsimenon.com, the website of Omnibus Verlag. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / toutsimenon.placedesediteurs.com
  2. ↑ Maigret et l'indicateur in the Simenon 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 , p. 74.
  4. ↑ Maigret and the Spy ( Memento of the original from July 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.diogenes.de archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the website of Diogenes Verlag .
  5. ↑ Maigret of the Month: Maigret et l'indicateur (Maigret and the Informer, Maigret and the Flea) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  6. ↑ 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. 24.
  7. ^ A b Murielle Wenger: Maigret's first name - Maigret and firearms on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  8. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , p. 399.
  9. ↑ a b Pierre Maury: L'homme qui sait tout . In: Le Soir of June 23, 2003.
  10. ↑ Maigret and the spy on maigret.de.
  11. ^ Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret-Marathon 74: The spy . On FAZ.net from October 9, 2009.
  12. ↑ Israel Shenker: Chez Simenon . In: The New York Times, October 24, 1971.
  13. ↑ "It may be treason to say so but a certain similarity is now beginning to creep into Simenon's Maigret stories. […] Nice cozy touches […] These are what Maigret fans have come to expect and enjoy. "Quoted from: Publishers Weekly Volume 203, Part 1, 1973, p. 157.
  14. ↑ “As usual the plot is intriguing, the dialogue sharp, the writing taut.” Quoted from: Best Sellers Volume 33. Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation, 1973, p. 21.
  15. ^ "Peu de chose indeed, a microdab". Quoted from: Maigret and the Informer at Kirkus Reviews .
  16. ^ Films & TV on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.