Maigret's War of Nerves

Good mysteries, written better than most. IF you are a mystery reader (or Francophile) and haven't tried the pleasures of Georges Simenon, you have a lot to look forward to. PLUS my books arrived fast and in excellent condition. Rich

Trivia: Several times in the book, the William Desmond Taylor murder is referred to. In one such instance, a magazine article on the Taylor case is quoted, although the specific source is not cited in the book. The article quoted is "I Know Who Killed Desmond Taylor" by Ed. C. King, in True Detective Mysteries, Oct. 1930, which has been reprinted in Taylorology #50.

Maigret does an audacious thing at the beginning of this book. He arranges for a condemned man to escape from his cell. All the evidence points to the man's guilt, yet Maigret does not believe the simple fellow can be guilty of viciously stabbing to death a rich old lady and her companion. He didn't even know the victims, and he stole nothing from them. What diabolical puppeteer is hiding behind the scenes, plotting events, contriving scenes and pulling everyone's strings? This Maigret mystery is a fascinating study of how the warped personality of a killer can get under the skin of the investigator. Simenon thought a novel should be concise enough to read in one sitting. I suggest reading A Man's Head in one sitting if you can, to experience fully the mounting tension of tracking down the killer.

Although not strictly speaking one of Georges Simenon's "psychological novels", Maigret's War of Nerves nonetheless explores the psychology of several characters. Detective Maigret arranges the `escape' from prison of a convicted killer that he helped put away in the first place. Maigret had become convinced of the defendant's guilt, but the evidence at trial had been overwhelming. In this 1940 work, Maigret places his well-established career at risk. Maigret slowly unravels the mystery behind the true killer, but will it be enough to save the wrongly convicted man or Maigret's own reputation? Simenon leads the reader through an examination of the most basic and most extreme human motivations. Simenon wrote dozens of Maigret mysteries as well as other `romans durs'. Maigret's War of Nerves is one of his better efforts.

The setting is Paris in the 1930's. A starving Czech medical student nurses his coffee and eats his yogurt in a fashionable Montmartre bar. A popular American socialite goes about his glamorous life unaware that the quiet man in the corner is planning his destruction. Enter Inspector Maigret, the taciturn and brilliant detective. Soon the high strung medical student and the deep thinking Maigret are engaged in a war of nerves.There is just something special about Paris during the interwar years. It is a deep well from which many of the worlds great espionage and mystery writers have drawn. What makes Goerges Simenon's Maigret so special is that he is a contemporary. Maigret's Paris and the criminal world which he inhabits are drawn from Simenon's direct on the spot experience and not from the history books.