Maigret on the Riviera

It's a love story and a drinking story both. Simenon has a positive genius for transforming scenes of boozy low life into a comic mix of poetry and passion. Maigret has been sent to the Côte d'Azur to investigate the stabbing to death of William Brown. The greatest tact is required because Brown in some unspecified way has important connections. Brown was living on the Riviera in a modest villa with a woman and her mother. In addition to this unsavory relationship, he leads a second secret life, for a few days every month, drinking himself into oblivion at the Liberty Bar. Liberty is something Brown seems to have pursued relentlessly since he left his hard-working family and their vast sheep farms in Australia. Maigret uncovers plenty of suspicious characters: the two dubious ladies who form Brown's untidy household, the two delightfully disreputable women who drink with him, the sleazy casino waiter, the coldly efficient Brown son visiting from Australia. It so happens that William Brown looked a bit like Maigret, a moving discovery for the chief inspector. Maigret, like Brown, is hard pressed to take anything seriously in this land of shimmering sunshine and mimosa-scented breezes. I wish the present-day writers of bestsellers would study Simenon. Every sentence of this little book is perfect. The plot is sparely told, the all-too-human characters deeply understood.