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A review by fictionfan
The Late Monsieur Gallet by Georges Simenon
3.0
Maigret and the impossible crime…
Summer of 1930, and Paris is baking in the June sunshine. The Paris police are busy on crowd control and security for a state visit from the King of Spain, so when a request comes in from the police in Sancerre asking for help with a murder case, Chief Inspector Maigret has no free officers to send. So he decides to take the case on himself. The victim is a man called Monsieur Gallet, a travelling agent who covered the area of Normandy for his company. It was during one of these trips that he was killed in a hotel bedroom. Maigret starts by breaking the news to Monsieur Gallet’s wife, but she refuses to believe him since there was no reason for him to be in Sancerre on that day and in fact she had received a postcard from him placing him elsewhere. Maigret soon realises that Monsieur Gallet was leading a double life, and to solve the crime he will have to find out why. But he’ll also have to work out why Gallet was both shot from a distance and stabbed at the same time…
Another very early one from Simenon, and it appears to be an attempt to create an ‘impossible crime’ scenario. Impossible crimes are never my favourite kind of mystery, and as usual this one gets so bogged down in the how that my eyes began to glaze over. (Well, my ears, I suppose, really, since I was listening to the audiobook.) The method turns out to be both overly complicated and highly unlikely, as is so often the case with this type of mystery.
These very early books are even more variable in quality than his later ones, and I fear this one is really not very good. The setting is curiously under described, that usually being one of Simenon’s strengths. Most of the characters are equally shallow, with a couple of exceptions. Gallet himself never really came to life for me until the very end – his complicated life seemed largely to be contrived to serve the mystery. It felt to me like Simenon had thought of the method of killing and had then designed everything else around that, rather than having the crime grow out of the personalities of the victim and suspects.
There are a couple of points of interest that lifted it a little. Gallet is involved with the remnants of the pro-monarchy movement in France. In my ignorance, I had never considered that such a thing still existed although, once it was pointed out, I realised that in 1930 for many people in France the upheavals of the century before would still be in living memory, just about, or at least only one generation ago. The motive was also quite interesting – obviously I can’t go into details – although I felt it pushed at the credibility line a little too hard. How Maigret got to the solution was beyond me, however – it seemed to be inspired guesswork rather than his usual dogged investigatory work.
Part of the problem was that I felt that a major part of the solution – the who – was signalled from fairly early on, and so came as no surprise, while the other part – the motivation behind Gallet’s double life – came out of the blue. The how never became clear in my mind – one of those complicated methods that always leave me wondering why anyone would go to such lengths to carry out what could have been achieved just as effectively much more simply.
Maigret is still not showing signs of his later excessive drinking and is still riding a bike, but otherwise he feels a bit more like the man he later becomes. There’s some commentary on class and money, and the solution is morally ambiguous in terms of Maigret’s reaction – having been shown to rather despise the monied bourgeoisie, we see him at the end almost touching his forelock, as if crimes carried out to keep the wealthy wealthy are more forgivable than other crimes. Again, I doubt the later Maigret would have acted as he does in this one.
Overall, then, not one of the better Maigrets, in my opinion. I’m very glad I read some of the later Maigrets first – if I’d tried to read the series in order I doubt I’d have got past the first few books. So my suggestion to Maigret newbies is to jump in much later in the series, and only backtrack to these early books later if the need to be a completist kick in!
Summer of 1930, and Paris is baking in the June sunshine. The Paris police are busy on crowd control and security for a state visit from the King of Spain, so when a request comes in from the police in Sancerre asking for help with a murder case, Chief Inspector Maigret has no free officers to send. So he decides to take the case on himself. The victim is a man called Monsieur Gallet, a travelling agent who covered the area of Normandy for his company. It was during one of these trips that he was killed in a hotel bedroom. Maigret starts by breaking the news to Monsieur Gallet’s wife, but she refuses to believe him since there was no reason for him to be in Sancerre on that day and in fact she had received a postcard from him placing him elsewhere. Maigret soon realises that Monsieur Gallet was leading a double life, and to solve the crime he will have to find out why. But he’ll also have to work out why Gallet was both shot from a distance and stabbed at the same time…
Another very early one from Simenon, and it appears to be an attempt to create an ‘impossible crime’ scenario. Impossible crimes are never my favourite kind of mystery, and as usual this one gets so bogged down in the how that my eyes began to glaze over. (Well, my ears, I suppose, really, since I was listening to the audiobook.) The method turns out to be both overly complicated and highly unlikely, as is so often the case with this type of mystery.
These very early books are even more variable in quality than his later ones, and I fear this one is really not very good. The setting is curiously under described, that usually being one of Simenon’s strengths. Most of the characters are equally shallow, with a couple of exceptions. Gallet himself never really came to life for me until the very end – his complicated life seemed largely to be contrived to serve the mystery. It felt to me like Simenon had thought of the method of killing and had then designed everything else around that, rather than having the crime grow out of the personalities of the victim and suspects.
There are a couple of points of interest that lifted it a little. Gallet is involved with the remnants of the pro-monarchy movement in France. In my ignorance, I had never considered that such a thing still existed although, once it was pointed out, I realised that in 1930 for many people in France the upheavals of the century before would still be in living memory, just about, or at least only one generation ago. The motive was also quite interesting – obviously I can’t go into details – although I felt it pushed at the credibility line a little too hard. How Maigret got to the solution was beyond me, however – it seemed to be inspired guesswork rather than his usual dogged investigatory work.
Part of the problem was that I felt that a major part of the solution – the who – was signalled from fairly early on, and so came as no surprise, while the other part – the motivation behind Gallet’s double life – came out of the blue. The how never became clear in my mind – one of those complicated methods that always leave me wondering why anyone would go to such lengths to carry out what could have been achieved just as effectively much more simply.
Maigret is still not showing signs of his later excessive drinking and is still riding a bike, but otherwise he feels a bit more like the man he later becomes. There’s some commentary on class and money, and the solution is morally ambiguous in terms of Maigret’s reaction – having been shown to rather despise the monied bourgeoisie, we see him at the end almost touching his forelock, as if crimes carried out to keep the wealthy wealthy are more forgivable than other crimes. Again, I doubt the later Maigret would have acted as he does in this one.
Overall, then, not one of the better Maigrets, in my opinion. I’m very glad I read some of the later Maigrets first – if I’d tried to read the series in order I doubt I’d have got past the first few books. So my suggestion to Maigret newbies is to jump in much later in the series, and only backtrack to these early books later if the need to be a completist kick in!