A review by oldpondnewfrog
None of Maigret's Business by Michael Prichard, Georges Simenon

3.0

Maigret s'amuse. I refer to this book in my mind by the French title, whose tone matches the story's better than the English. Maigret, the famous chief inspector, is this once on holiday. Not knowing what to do with himself, but enjoying it nonetheless. When a case comes up, more interesting than watching Maigret try to follow/solve it as a common newspaper reader would is watching him try simultaneously to figure out how to spend his free time. He revels in discovering "what went on when he wasn't there": how his wife spends her day, how trucks back out of the warehouse across the street. He and his wife go on walks, find new restaurants and revisit near-forgotten favorites, visit the movie house twice in one week, develop new daily routines, and together become tourists in their own city. This was my first Maigret novel, my third Simenon, and the second of his in which characters find a kind of new lease on life. I'm more interested in reading Simenon's standalones than his potboilers, but I like Maigret. He asks himself too many questions, though. And the paragraphs are slightly too monotonously short. Still, it's fun getting to know 1950s Paris with him.