Maigret and the Saturday Caller by Georges Simenon

Maigret and the Saturday Caller by Georges Simenon

Belgian fiction

Original title – Maigret et le client du Samedi

Translator – Siân Reynolds

Source – Library book

Well, it is a late entry to the 1962 club. I had got this and another Maigret published in 62 from the library, but as ever, my dreams are always bigger than what my personal reality can do as a reader, although I finished this Sunday night I just hadn’t got chance to write it up this morning. I don’t know what else to add about Simenon I have read so many of his books on the blog. But I love how he plays with the form of the detective novel. At times this is an example, or is it just a coincidence?

‘Pretend to what?

“To look after me. To be my wife.

Was he regretting having come? He was shifting about on the chair, occasionally looking at the door as if he were about to bolt outside.

Im wondering if I wasn’t wrong to come. But you’re the only man in the world I can trust . . . It seems as if I ve known you a long time. I’m almost sure you’ll understand.’

‘Are you a jealous husband, Monsieur Planchon?

Their eyes met. Maigret thought he could see complete frankness in the other man’s expression.

Not any more, I think. I was. But no. Now, Im past that ..?

‘But you want to kill her just the same?

He has turned to Maigret the one man he trusts to know how he feels

The book follows the events of a painter and decorator with a hare lip. HE turns up one Saturday whilst Maigret is on his way home, the man Leonard Planchon talks to him. The two talk for a time, and he gets the man’s life, how he is a painter and decorator, how he meets his wife Renee and how he had taken on an employee to help him with his work. This man, Roger Prou, over time, has become more involved in Leonard’s life. He eventually moves into his home, and at this point, he feels his wife and Roger are having an affair, and he has come to tell Maigret he wants to kill them. He is told to talk to Maigeret every day, and when he stops calling, he has to find out more when Renee says Leonard had passed his business to Roger and left with a suitcase. At this point, he tries to find out what has happened to this man he had spoken at length to. Where is Leonard? What happened between that last call and them visiting his house? He gets his usual team to start and trace those last few days and what has been happening in the house, and where Leonard had been the last few hours.

On Monday morning, Janvier and Lapointe, using methods bordering on the illegal, had gone to Rue Tholoze, where under Renée’s suspicious gaze they had looked in every room, pretending to take measurements.

In the late afternoon, Leonard Planchon had telephoned him at Quai des Orfèvres from a café on Place des Abbesses, or so he said, and Maigret had certainly overheard voices, glasses clinking and the sound of a till.

The man’s last words had been: Well, thank you,

anyway.

He hadn’t mentioned taking a trip, nor given any hint at all of suicide. It was on the Saturday that he had vaguely mentioned that solution, which he was rejecting, so as not to leave Isabelle in the care of Renée and her lover.

When he has disappeared then Maogret and his usual gang decide to find out what has happened to Leonard.

I loved how he twisted the way this story went. A murder that didn’t happen is mentioned, and then the potential murderer has disappeared. it has a classic murder plot, the love triangle, and how many classic crime novels balance the love triangle. Leonard is a simple man, and when he chats to Maigret, you see a man who has struggled and met a woman that has maybe been a wrong’em, and then Roger has made use of that space and Leonard. It also has Maigret Homelife, which I always love to see. This is something Simenon does is make Maigret’s wife a character in the books and give him a home life as well as his job. I’m annoyed I missed the club. I am sure when the next one in the 30s comes around, there will be a Simenon. There always seems to be any way or another from the penguin’s new translations of Maigret. I’m slowly working through them. Have you read this Mairgret? do you like how he plays with the form of the crime novel?

Winston’s score B solid Maigret can be read in an evening.