Maigret

Of late I had begun to feel like I needed a new set of mystery/spy novels to read, that the ones on which I've subsi(sted in recent years had either begun to run out (Rendell's Wexford series, Furst's Night Soldiers series) or start to get stale (Tana French, Elizabeth George). Then I read Adam Gopnik's piece on the greyness of the world of Simenon's Maigret novels and thought, "oh yeah, there's that."

Per Wikipedia Simenon wrote 75 novels and 28 short stories featuring Inspector Maigret between 1931 and 1972. Gopnik praised in particular those published in the fifties, so when I went down to the Chapel Hill Public Library -- that beloved institution which I have been neglecting since the beginning of the pandemic -- and perused its shelves, I found one from that period, checked it out and brought it home.

"Maigret and the Man on the Bench".... no, let me spare you any and all plot details. If anything, Gopnik slightly spoiled Maigret for me when he pointed out that the mysteries are typically resolved not with an "aha!" moment but with an "ah..." one, and this novel bears that out. But in the end as with so many things in life, it's not about the destination but the journey. Maigret takes us onto the workaday streets of Paris, a place that it's all too easy for the tourist (the default mindset for Americans in Paris or even Europe, but it physical or notional) to forget must exist, captivated as we are by the blaze of history and culture we're there to imbibe.

And look at the clock. Gotta shift into work gear. More later.