Maigret Afraid

Don't be misled by the title. Maigret has not turned coward. He's afraid not for himself but for others who seem to be headed for trouble... Maigret attends a police conference that makes him feel out of date. On the way home, he visits his old friend Julien Chabot, who's the Examining Magistrate for the little village of Fontenay-le-Compte. Another aging official like himself! To the embarrassment of his friend, and the delight of many of the townspeople, Maigret walks into a tricky murder case. The local people have a strong dislike for the leading family of the town and have pretty much decided that the murderer is among the town worthies. Maigret must work around all factions to get at the truth of the case. And it's not even his case! In some ways this book feels dated. For example, Maigret is strangely tolerant of a young man who beats his mistress! But time spent reading Simenon is ever without its pleasures if you can put up with occasional displays of political incorrectness.

A small, quiet French village dominated by a sense of social status is well described in this novel by Georges Simenon. The book has an amazing sense of atmosphere, of believable characters and situations, of the dark world in the pouring rain in which the three victims die... The moral of the book is concerned with the social statuses of the characters, of how the normal people despise the aristocracy, how the aristocracy despise the aristocracy and the citizens. The book is, like all Simenon, well-written and believable, even in the most fantastic situations, dragging the reader onwards and onwards, unable to put the book down.