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cinzia_2509's review against another edition
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.5
rmhollars's review
dark
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
william1349's review
3.0
Last third is confused. Interestingly no breasts mentioned except in the negative
patrickhaines's review
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
frahorus's review against another edition
3.0
Riprendo in mano un nuovo giallo con protagonista il commissario Maigret, anche se mi ero promesso di non leggerli troppo di frequente. Stavolta Maigret si occuperà di un delitto che lo colpisce al cuore visto che a perdere la vita non sarà soltanto la signora ricca alla quale sta indagando, trovata morta nel suo letto, ma anche Cécile, una ragazza che tutte le mattine si presentava al suo commissariato per poter parlare con lui, e gliela assassinano nel suo commissariato!
Anche stavolta Simenon rimarca il fatto che Maigret indaga su persone che, prima di diventare assassini, erano normali come noi: hanno una famiglia, un lavoro mediocre, una vita mediocre e non fanno quasi mai nulla di straordinario. Ci vuole dire, a bassa voce, che ognuno di noi potrebbe diventare un potenziale assassino. La nostra parte nascosta, oscura, può esplodere da un momento all'altro senza che ce ne rendiamo conto, e proprio questo deve cercare il detective: cosa ha spinto quel personaggio ha compiere quel delitto, e per fare ciò deve immedesimarsi in lui, provando le sue stesse emozioni. Ed infatti il Nostro ne uscirà affaticato e provato da questa indagine, tanto è vero che non riesce neanche una volta a pranzare e/o cenare con sua moglie che continua ad aspettarlo a tavola (anzi egli è così preso dalle indagini che dimentica pure di avvisarla che non potrà rientrare a casa!). Le atmosfere cupe e tristi come triste è questa vicenda sono rese benissimo, ma ho notato che dalla seconda parte in poi l'indagine sembra volgere in maniera un po' pasticciata (non aiuta il fatto che al commissario hanno mandato un poliziotto che lo osserva nel suo modo di indagare).
P.S. In questa indagine solo io noto che il commissario va a bere al bar praticamente ogni cinque minuti?
P.S. 2 Fa riflettere il fatto che Maigret se avesse accettato di parlare subito con la ragazza forse le avrebbe salvato la vita.
Anche stavolta Simenon rimarca il fatto che Maigret indaga su persone che, prima di diventare assassini, erano normali come noi: hanno una famiglia, un lavoro mediocre, una vita mediocre e non fanno quasi mai nulla di straordinario. Ci vuole dire, a bassa voce, che ognuno di noi potrebbe diventare un potenziale assassino. La nostra parte nascosta, oscura, può esplodere da un momento all'altro senza che ce ne rendiamo conto, e proprio questo deve cercare il detective: cosa ha spinto quel personaggio ha compiere quel delitto, e per fare ciò deve immedesimarsi in lui, provando le sue stesse emozioni. Ed infatti il Nostro ne uscirà affaticato e provato da questa indagine, tanto è vero che non riesce neanche una volta a pranzare e/o cenare con sua moglie che continua ad aspettarlo a tavola (anzi egli è così preso dalle indagini che dimentica pure di avvisarla che non potrà rientrare a casa!). Le atmosfere cupe e tristi come triste è questa vicenda sono rese benissimo, ma ho notato che dalla seconda parte in poi l'indagine sembra volgere in maniera un po' pasticciata (non aiuta il fatto che al commissario hanno mandato un poliziotto che lo osserva nel suo modo di indagare).
P.S. In questa indagine solo io noto che il commissario va a bere al bar praticamente ogni cinque minuti?
P.S. 2 Fa riflettere il fatto che Maigret se avesse accettato di parlare subito con la ragazza forse le avrebbe salvato la vita.
fictionfan's review against another edition
5.0
Maigret’s lapse…
Cécile Pardon has become a regular visitor to Inspector Maigret at his office in the Police Judiciaire building in Paris. A spinster who lived with her elderly widowed aunt, Cécile had become convinced that someone was coming in to their apartment at night while they slept. Maigret had made a superficial gesture towards investigating, but everyone thought she was imagining things. And worse, everyone was teasing Maigret that she kept visiting because she had a crush on him. So on this morning, when Maigret saw her sitting patiently in the waiting room he left her there and got on with other things. When eventually he went to collect her, she was gone. Later, the body of her aunt is found in the apartment, strangled, and Cécile is nowhere to be found. The title gives a clue as to her fate.
Realising the aunt must already have been dead when Cécile came to see him, Maigret suspects that she knew who the murderer was and wanted to tell him directly rather than report it to the local police. He feels that if he had only taken the time to speak to her, Cécile may not have been killed. Maigret is too sensible and too experienced to blame himself for her death – he’s quite clear in his own mind that the murderer is fully responsible for that – but nevertheless his slight lapse makes him even more determined than usual to see that justice is done.
This one has quite a complicated plot for a Maigret novel, with several suspects and possible motives. Mostly it’s set in the apartment block in Bourg-la-Reine that Cécile and her aunt lived in – a block that the aunt also owned. For it turns out that she’s a rich old woman, but miserly, always convinced that her relatives are scrounging from her. She’s also unpleasant, treating poor Cécile like an unpaid servant, being unwilling to assist her nephew even though he’s out of a job and his wife is about to have a baby, and so on. She plays her many relatives off against each other, hinting to each that they will be the one to inherit when she dies. But these aren’t the only suspects – rumour has it that she keeps large sums of money in the apartment since she doesn’t trust banks, so anyone may have decided to break in, kill her and steal the money. However, the apartment has a concierge who controls entry to the building, so that if this was what happened, it must have been one of the other tenants, or the concierge herself.
Later in the book, Maigret finds himself being accompanied on his investigations by a visiting American criminologist, Spencer Oates, who has been given the opportunity to study the great man’s method. But Maigret, as he has said in other books, doesn’t have what he thinks of as “a method” – he simply speaks to the people involved, learns as much as he can about the victim, studies the location and the timings, thinks himself into the mind of the murderer, and uses his intelligence and experience to work out what must have happened. So he uses Oates as a kind of sounding board as he develops his theory, thus allowing the reader to follow his thinking too.
There’s a sub-plot about a man, one of the tenants, who has previously been jailed for his inappropriate behaviour with young girls. Some aspects of this might jar with modern readers, as girls are shown both as vulnerable and predatory. Although it’s an unpopular viewpoint now, I find this much more realistic than the idea that girls remain innocent angels until the day they are legally adult, so I felt this was an accurate if unflattering portrayal of adolescent girls, and also that Simenon gave a contrast in Maigret and the ex-prisoner of the response of the good man and the bad – one resisting temptation, the other preying on vulnerability.
I listened to the audiobook narrated by Gareth Armstrong, and as always he did an excellent job of creating distinctive voices for Maigret and all the other characters.
Overall, I think this is one of the best of the Maigrets I’ve read so far. Simenon’s portrayal of the unglamorous side of Paris is as excellent as always, but this one is better plotted than some, and the themes and characterisation have more depth. And I always enjoy when the solution manages to surprise me but still feel credible. Quite a bleak story, but Maigret’s fundamental decency and integrity and his happy home life always stop these stories from becoming too depressingly noir. Highly recommended.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
Cécile Pardon has become a regular visitor to Inspector Maigret at his office in the Police Judiciaire building in Paris. A spinster who lived with her elderly widowed aunt, Cécile had become convinced that someone was coming in to their apartment at night while they slept. Maigret had made a superficial gesture towards investigating, but everyone thought she was imagining things. And worse, everyone was teasing Maigret that she kept visiting because she had a crush on him. So on this morning, when Maigret saw her sitting patiently in the waiting room he left her there and got on with other things. When eventually he went to collect her, she was gone. Later, the body of her aunt is found in the apartment, strangled, and Cécile is nowhere to be found. The title gives a clue as to her fate.
Realising the aunt must already have been dead when Cécile came to see him, Maigret suspects that she knew who the murderer was and wanted to tell him directly rather than report it to the local police. He feels that if he had only taken the time to speak to her, Cécile may not have been killed. Maigret is too sensible and too experienced to blame himself for her death – he’s quite clear in his own mind that the murderer is fully responsible for that – but nevertheless his slight lapse makes him even more determined than usual to see that justice is done.
This one has quite a complicated plot for a Maigret novel, with several suspects and possible motives. Mostly it’s set in the apartment block in Bourg-la-Reine that Cécile and her aunt lived in – a block that the aunt also owned. For it turns out that she’s a rich old woman, but miserly, always convinced that her relatives are scrounging from her. She’s also unpleasant, treating poor Cécile like an unpaid servant, being unwilling to assist her nephew even though he’s out of a job and his wife is about to have a baby, and so on. She plays her many relatives off against each other, hinting to each that they will be the one to inherit when she dies. But these aren’t the only suspects – rumour has it that she keeps large sums of money in the apartment since she doesn’t trust banks, so anyone may have decided to break in, kill her and steal the money. However, the apartment has a concierge who controls entry to the building, so that if this was what happened, it must have been one of the other tenants, or the concierge herself.
Later in the book, Maigret finds himself being accompanied on his investigations by a visiting American criminologist, Spencer Oates, who has been given the opportunity to study the great man’s method. But Maigret, as he has said in other books, doesn’t have what he thinks of as “a method” – he simply speaks to the people involved, learns as much as he can about the victim, studies the location and the timings, thinks himself into the mind of the murderer, and uses his intelligence and experience to work out what must have happened. So he uses Oates as a kind of sounding board as he develops his theory, thus allowing the reader to follow his thinking too.
There’s a sub-plot about a man, one of the tenants, who has previously been jailed for his inappropriate behaviour with young girls. Some aspects of this might jar with modern readers, as girls are shown both as vulnerable and predatory. Although it’s an unpopular viewpoint now, I find this much more realistic than the idea that girls remain innocent angels until the day they are legally adult, so I felt this was an accurate if unflattering portrayal of adolescent girls, and also that Simenon gave a contrast in Maigret and the ex-prisoner of the response of the good man and the bad – one resisting temptation, the other preying on vulnerability.
I listened to the audiobook narrated by Gareth Armstrong, and as always he did an excellent job of creating distinctive voices for Maigret and all the other characters.
Overall, I think this is one of the best of the Maigrets I’ve read so far. Simenon’s portrayal of the unglamorous side of Paris is as excellent as always, but this one is better plotted than some, and the themes and characterisation have more depth. And I always enjoy when the solution manages to surprise me but still feel credible. Quite a bleak story, but Maigret’s fundamental decency and integrity and his happy home life always stop these stories from becoming too depressingly noir. Highly recommended.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
han_cat's review
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
furfff's review against another edition
1.0
Aka maigret and the spinster. While it starts in a fashion similar to others in the series that I liked (maigret not being intellectually/emotionally available to someone who seeks out his assistance and the consequences of that), this one is just so muddled and unpleasant to me.