In his overview of Maigret novels in some recent New Yorker, Adam Gopnik calls attention to the fact that Simenon shows now general doubt in the rectitude of the French state apparaturs: Maigret and his Paris police associates are agents and instruments of the French state and that's just fine. Nothing to see hear.
This weekend I'm reading the 1952 Maigret and the Gangsters and this mindset totally and everywhere in evidence. The cops are easily able to chase down some baddies by reviewing hotel registration cards. Maigret wants a wiretap on a phone and he just calls a switchboard and orders it up, no due process concerns whatsoever.
Now, the body of case law and constraints on state power which today mandate that to put a wiretap in place the cops need a court order and to get it they need decent evidence that wrongdoing is occurring to convince a generally skeptical judge, I'm willing to bet most of that came into being in the sixties and seventies in the USA, so what Maigret did in principal might have happened in the US.
More importantly, it made me realize that almost as a rule, in mystery novels, shows, movies, whatever, we don't give a fuck about due process ever. If the detective breaks into an apartment with no warrant and on the thinnest of pretexts, we really don't care. God forbid that our narrative consumption should be interrupted by a consideration of a suspect's rights.
I think that's probably true in life too. If you or your neighbor is a victim of a crime, you're not worried about due process. Get the motherfucker. No crime in my backyard. That due process stuff is for other people.
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