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Maigret and the Saturday Caller
Maigret and the Saturday Caller | Georges Simenon
1 post | 1 read
"One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequaled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories." --The GuardianMaigret is visited by a troubled man and asks him to keep in touch, hoping to curtail his criminal impulses--but when the man disappears, Maigret must investigate a crime that may or may not have occurred When Maigret returns home at the end of a long day, he is surprised to find a tense man named Lonard Planchon waiting on his doorstep with an unusual problem. Planchon wants to kill his wife, or perhaps his wife and her lover, who for two years have been making him sleep on a cot in the dining room. He has even worked out a plan to hide their bodies in concrete. Uneasy and hoping to stop the man before he goes too far, Maigret must investigate a murder that has not yet been committed and uncover the truth behind this peculiar mnage trois. A fast-paced, psychologically astute mystery, Maigret and the Saturday Caller follows the inspector through Montmartre as he patiently questions Parisian partiers, bartenders, and others as to Planchon's whereabouts, stripping away a bit more of the mystery's camouflage with each encounter until they lead him to their shocking conclusion.
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I stayed up 'til silly-o'clock to finish this last night, failed and had to wait until this evening to complete the last 15 pages - Torture!
Now, I'm no expert on 1950s French criminal law, but I still reckon Maigret could have done more to safely resolve the situation when he is visited at home by a man confessing to a murder he hasn't yet committed. Maigret's inability to prevent this slow-motion car crash of a situation developing is part of ⬇️

Bookwomble ... the morbid sadness of the unfolding story. An emotionally gut-wrenching episode. 5 unhappy⭐s 11mo
Leftcoastzen Are you reading them in order ? 11mo
Bookwomble @Leftcoastzen No, I can't get them in order, just what comes into the library, but that's ok as they're each self-contained. The only sign of the passage of time seems to be Maigret's alcohol consumption, which in the later books his doctor has advised him to cut down on, which he tends to think about over a glass of calvados. 11mo
Leftcoastzen 😄I have some in the stash , I should just start them.Seems like in the old days mystery writers were assuming a reader might jump in anywhere. 11mo
Bookwomble @Leftcoastzen Could be so. I find picking up a Maigret a reassuring act - I know what I'm expecting, trust Simenon to deliver, and so far he hasn't disappointed. At some point I may reread the first ones I picked up, as getting to know Maigret has felt like an accretion process, gradually building an understanding of his character, and I wonder if I'd get more out of them now he's more familiar to me. 11mo
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