The Hanged man of Saint Phoilen By Georges Simenon

The Hanged Man of Saint Pholien by Georges Simenon

Belgian Crime fiction

Orginal title –  Le Pendu de Saint-Pholien

Translator – Linda Coverdale

Methought I heard a voice cry “Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep,” the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast

Macbeth after he killed the King and felt Guilt 

Well another stage on the trip through the new translation of the Maigret series ,this is the third in the series which is coming out in order of release .So 72 after this to review (well I’ve read number four and part way into number five) .

The man was shabby and looked for all the world like one of the chronically unemployed found in every big city, always on the lookout for an opportunity. Except that he was pulling thousand-franc notes from his pocket and counting them, after which he wrapped them in grey paper, tied the package with string and addressed it. At least thirty notes, 30,000 Belgian francs! Maigret had frowned at that, and when the unknown man left after paying for his coffee, the inspector had followed him to the nearest post office.

What made Maigret follow the man in the first place

Now this focus on Maigret following his nose ,he sees a man of disheveled  appearance ,whilst working in Brussels .He observes this man with a very large amount of money for his appearance .So the Inspector being the inspector follows the man ,we see him having his case change ,Maigret sharing the room next to him and then next day the man commits suicide .This leads him to a case full of bloody clothes after some investigation he finds the mans name is Lecoq initially he was thought to be Jeunet but when Maigret discovers his real name we start to see what brought this man to this point it was an event ten years earlier that involved Lecoq ,Van Damme (now a business man ) and a few others that where students at the time .a secret club they where in lead to them trying a killing this is what drove the man to suicide after they had killed a man ten years earlier and left him hung in a church .

Maigret found a seedy-looking hotel at 18, Rue de la Roquette, right where it joins Rue de Lappe, with its accordion-band dance halls and squalid housing. That stretch of Roquette is a good fifty metres from Place de la Bastille. Every ground floor hosts a bistro, every house a hotel frequented by drifters, immigrants, tarts and the chronically unemployed.

The hotel was Jeunet /lecoq ended up living ,

Now this isn’t really a straight forward crime novel ,no its more a dissection of a man’s life after he has died .When Jeunet as he thought at the time committed  Suicide had caught the inspectors eye and had just decide to follow which lead to the mans earlier history as he tried to find out why this guy had all that money and what had driven him to kill himself .That then lead to the second case the killing of the man ten years earlier .I enjoyed this one it was maybe to compact for the complex nature of the plot so although you got the crime in full it maybe felt you were blinkered at times as some of the minor characters were quite one-dimensional .So next time I will bring you a tale on the Canal and Maigret .