Reviews - Maigret in Vichy: Inspector Maigret #68

A fun one. Maigret chills out on vacation, until the lady he and his wife kept seeing ends up dead. A nice low key rumination on the extent to which we can control who we are, versus the effect of our surroundings. Also some good madame maigret stuff, which I’ve unexpectedly cone to find the most pleasant aspect of reading all of these at once, the slow shading of character....

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3.0

Inspector Maigret and his wife are on holiday in Vichy, a resort town in south central France renowned for its spas and medicinal waters. Maigret had been feeling out of sorts and had consulted his physician before leaving Paris, who recommended Maigret to a colleague of his, Dr. Rian, whose practice was in Vichy. Maigret later met with Rian, who recommended a regimen consisting of daily walks (which he and Madame Maigret did together daily), a healthy diet, and drinking of Vichy's pure water. So, no beer, sausage, and a cut down on smoking from his beloved pipe for Maigret.

Maigret's holiday is anything but humdrum, when he becomes indirectly involved in a case by the local police authorities (whose chief, Lecoeur, had once served under him in Paris) in which a woman was found strangled to death in a residence she owned. It so happened that Maigret had seen this woman (sometimes referred to in the book as "the lady in lilac", reflective of the outfit she was wearing when Maigret espied her in public) once days earlier whilst walking with his wife. "For Maigret, the lady in lilac was not simply the victim of a murder, nor a person who had led a particular type of existence. He was beginning to know her and he was trying, almost unwittingly, to learn more about her."

All in all, this was a breezy and thought-provoking story. I enjoyed the experience.

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