Maigret and the good people

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Maigret and the good people (French: Maigret et les braves gens ) is a detective novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It is the 58th novel in a series of 75 novels and 28 short stories about the detective Maigret . The novel was written in Echandens from September 5 to 11, 1961 and was published by Presses de la Cité in Paris in April 1962 . From May 31 to June 27 of the same year, the French daily Le Figaro printed the novel in 23 episodes. The first German translation by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau was published in 1963 by Kiepenheuer & Witsch . In 1988, Diogenes Verlag published a new translation by Ingrid Altrichter.

When a retired cardboard manufacturer is murdered, there seems to be no motive for the crime. The deceased, his family and everyone around him are described by Commissioner Maigret as “good, decent people”, in whose lives there are no dark entanglements. In his investigations, Maigret tries to look behind the facade of civil decency.

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Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs in the 6th arrondissement

The summer holidays are over, and with the harbingers of autumn, everyday life is returning to Paris . Commissioner Maigret, who just returned from Meung-sur-Loire a few days ago , is rang out of his sleep in the middle of the night. In the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs , the 65-year-old cardboard box manufacturer René Josselin was found shot dead by his wife and daughter who had spent the evening in the theater. The last person who saw Josselin alive was his son-in-law, the pediatrician Dr. Favre, who played chess with him that evening before an ominous phone call called to a non-existent patient.

The murder weapon is Josselin's own, missing revolver, and there are no traces of a forced entry, so that Maigret assumes that the dead must have known his murderer. But there is no motive for murder. Both Josselin and his wife Francine and their daughter Véronique and her hard-working husband are described from all sides as "good, decent people". After a heart attack a few years ago, Josselin retired and handed the company over to his deputies Jouane and Goulet, both of whom are also full of praise for their former boss and sponsor. Maigret is almost relieved when he discovers a small flaw on the honorable Josselin's vest: behind his wife's back, he gambled away money in horse racing .

Only while rummaging through the family's past life does Maigret discover a black sheep that the other family members have kept from him: Francine's younger brother Philippe de Lancieux. Blamed by his father for his mother's death at birth, Philippe grew up in different homes and got on the wrong track at an early age. Time and again he succeeded with his talent at inventing stories and tricking money. He was supported financially by both his sister and her husband until Josselin refused to pay the money on the evening of the crime and the fatal shot occurred in an argument. Francine suspected the perpetrator immediately, but to Maigret's annoyance, she covered her brother until he managed to go into hiding. The search for Philippe de Lancieux was not successful until the following spring: he was found stabbed to death in the red-light district of Paris.

interpretation

After the last two novels Maigret and the old people and Maigret and the lazy thief had brought Commissioner Maigret into the milieu of the aristocracy and petty criminals, this time he investigates in his own class, that of the "good people", to which the Maigrets also belong or their friends, the pardons, count. It is true that the commissioner often finds it difficult to adapt to a foreign environment at the beginning of a case, but he does not feel more comfortable this time dealing with a murder case in a familiar environment. He has to understand that the crime knows no borders and that a corpse can also be in the cellar of the next neighbor. In any event, the typically Parisian bourgeoisie family Simenon describes is by no means as happy as it seems.

Anatole Broyard describes Simenon's novels from the world of the middle class as "novels of etiquette that contain murder". The murderer is punished for violating the conventions of the genre. In the milieu of the “good people” Maigret felt uncomfortable throughout the novel, as if he were bursting into the funeral of a loved one and bothering the bereaved with tactless questions. In the oppressive atmosphere of the investigation, the inspector kept running out of whistle. But in the end Simenon destroy his own novel structure. The good dead are not killed for a good reason. Instead of exposing the evil beneath the surface of the “good people”, the author introduces an outsider as a murderer, a “black sheep”, as the English title of the novel means. It is not the vulnerability of the good that is presented, but the banality of the evil.

However, for Tilman Spreckelsen it is precisely the bad brother who is actually the fascinating personality among the eponymous “good people”, even if he stays behind the curtain throughout the novel. Spreckelsen draws a parallel between the author and his character, who defied their unhappy life with invented stories that are so good that the whole world will believe them. In the end, however, the author lets the “lovable loser” come to a bad end. The moral of the story is that there is no place for a man like him in the world of good people.

reception

According to Steve Ownbey, Maigret and the Good People is an "excellent psychological novel" that can hardly be classified as a detective novel because it violates the rules of the genre and is far too realistic for a purely escapist, entertaining reading. “The tension is extraordinary”, but it is less the plot that makes the novel worth reading than “its mood, which, despite an oppressive thoughtfulness, is surprisingly calming.” For the New Yorker it was a “charming, cool Maigret”. in a "seductively deceptive case".

Kirkus Reviews described a Maigret novel, "as simple as anyone on the show" and "as calm and methodical as always". Anatole Broyard saw a fine example of Simenon's classic style with the exception of the disappointing ending. The Los Angeles Times , on the other hand, judged: “The novel inspires in the end.” For the Boston Globe , the resolution was, as usual, “ironic, convincing, psychologically impeccable”. Publishers Weekly saw the novel, however, "very muted in tone, very predictable in the outcome", since the reader is only asking himself who the black sheep is now.

The novel was filmed twice in the context of television series about the Commissioner Maigret: In 1978 Kinya Aikawa played the Commissioner in a Japanese TV production. In 1982 Jean Richard followed in the French series Les Enquêtes du Commissaire Maigret .

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: Maigret et les braves gens . Presses de la Cité, Paris 1962 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the good people . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1963.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the good people . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Heyne, Munich 1971.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the good people . Translation: Ingrid Altrichter. Diogenes, Zurich 1988, ISBN 3-257-21615-7 .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the good people . All Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 58. Translation: Ingrid Altrichter. Diogenes, Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-257-23858-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographie de Georges Simenon 1946 à 1967 on Toutesimenon.com, the website of Omnibus Verlag.
  2. ↑ Maigret et les braves gens 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. 53.
  4. ↑ Maigret et les braves gens (Maigret and the Black Sheep) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  5. ^ Publishers Weekly . Volume 208, 1975, p. 43.
  6. ↑ a b Anatole Broyard : Criminal Etiquette . In: The New York Times, January 23, 1976.
  7. ^ Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret Marathon 58: The good people . On FAZ.net from June 5, 2009.
  8. ↑ “This excellent psychological novel [Maigret and the Black Sheep] can only nominally be classified as a murder mystery, since it violates the fair-play deduction rule, and it is far too realistic to be called escapist entertainment. The suspense is extraordinary […] what makes it well worth reading is not so much its plot as its mood, which, despite a gloomy reflectiveness, is surprisingly reassuring. "Steve Ownbey in: National Review of April 30, 1976, quoted in enotes .com .
  9. ↑ "suave, cool Maigret [...] tantalizingly elusive case". Quoted from: The New Yorker Volume 51, Part 7, 1976, p. 95.
  10. ↑ "as frugal as any in the series [...] As calm and methodical as ever". Quoted from: Maigret and the Black Sheep by Georges Simenon on Kirkus Reviews .
  11. ↑ “The novel enthralls to the end.” Quoted from: The New York Times Saturday Review of Books and Art 1977, Volume 81/2, 1977, p. 19.
  12. ↑ "ironic, convincing, psychologically sound." Quoted from: The Publishers' Trade List Annual Volume 3, 1985, p. 71.
  13. ↑ "very muted in tone, very predictable in outcome". Quoted from Publishers Weekly . Volume 208, 1975, p. 43.
  14. ↑ Maigret Films & TV on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.