Classic mysteries-Maigret and the Pickpocket, by Simenon
The Maigret books, set in Paris in the 1950s and 60s, are social history lessons as well as crime novels. Maigret doesn’t drive, and relies on taxis, public transport, or subordinates to get him to crime scenes. As a young policeman, affording a car was out of the question, and now that he is a high-ranking policeman (he has badge number 4) it seems too late to learn a new skill. In MAIGRET AND THE PICKPOCKET, the detective’s wife is taking driving lessons so they can more easily visit their little cottage outside of the city.
Maigret smokes a pipe, and comments that a lot of younger men foolishly choose pipes that are unbalanced, with too short a stem and too heavy a bowl. Maigret likes to ride on buses that have an open upper platform, just so he can smoke. He likes to start the day with a glass of white wine and often stops for heavy meals like steak and chips or duck á l’orange, and beer, during the workday. The sheer volume of booze and smokes is striking to a modern reader.
Maigret is a minor celebrity in Paris. He is always featured in news stories about murders, and reporters have created a myth that he sees things ordinary policemen can’t. Maigret isn’t vain, however. He understands that he has a lot of power, and criminals—generally—don’t. Maigret knows that most crimes get solved because of criminal informants. The Paris police seem to have a lot of freedom to harass and intimidate people and apparently, it pays dividends. Maigret says that as a young officer he knew every pickpocket in Paris, even the foreign criminals who flew in for big special events. Habitual criminals treated arrest and incarceration as a natural part of doing business and regularly ratted on each other to lessen sentences.
But despite their inordinate power, the police are not heartless. In MAIGRET AND THE PICKPOCKET, two people could be prosecuted for procuring an abortion, but that’s never threatened or even considered. The young murder suspect, Francis Ricain, says he doesn’t want to go to jail because he is claustrophobic, so Maigret puts him up in a hotel for a couple of days. Maigret also buys him meals, cigarettes, brandy, and lends him small amounts of money.
To a certain extent, crime in 1960s Paris is homey and cozy. Maigret gets phone calls from magistrates who want immediate arrests but, generally, he’s allowed to operate as he thinks fit. Maigret’s subordinate officers are helpful and polite (a refreshing change from toxic British workplaces) Parisian citizens are cooperative, and no one begrudges the police their authority.
But murder is murder. Sophie Ricain is shot in the face, and the body is covered with flies when it is discovered. A special team is called in to decontaminate the apartment with formol, a particularly unpleasant chemical. Maigret observes that Sophie “was fairly ordinary, moderately pretty. Her toenails were painted red but had not been attended to for quite a long time, because the varnish was cracked, and the nails were not scrupulously clean.”
Even though Maigret has a lot of sympathy for the people involved, crime is grubby, and the inspector wears his moral superiority like a spring jacket.
Maigret’s investigative technique is to learn as much as he can about the people intimately involved in the crime. That involves interviews, certainly, but also simple observation of people interacting, during meals, for example. Maigret also frequently returns to the crime scene, just to hang around and absorb impressions from the physical surroundings.
The Ricains wanted to break into the movies, but they were at the mercy of unscrupulous producers like Carus. Carus gives Sophie a few walk-on parts then keeps her as a part-time mistress. Carus regularly “lends” Francis Ricain money and gives him some minor work as third assistant director but dangles the prospect of bigger and better things. Essentially, Francis is pimping his wife and Sophie hates him for it, even though she is a willing participant.
The Maigret books are a little like the Swedish Martin Beck series in that both principal detectives are plodders rather than superheroes. They’re quiet, calm, and unemotional. The major difference is that Maigret is happily married, without children, and the relationship is enough to sustain him. He doesn’t have close work friendships like Beck has with Kolberg, there’s always a clear division between Maigret, the boss, and his subordinates.
Maigret isn’t Sherlock Holmes. In A STUDY IN SCARLET, Holmes claims to be able to identify 140 different types of cigar ash. Holmes stores and cross-references data like a modern computer system. (And to be fair, Holmes is also imaginative in his interpretation of evidence. Toe prints found in THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES mean that Sir Charles was running away from something, not tiptoeing to eavesdrop, as the local police assume.)
Maigret doesn’t do any of that close forensics work, he delegates it to others. In MAIGRET AND THE PICKPOCKET he has frogmen retrieve a revolver from the Seine, dust the Ricain’s apartment for fingerprints, and canvas their apartment building for witnesses. There is a bullet trajectory reconstruction, and Sophie’s stomach contents are analyzed. That police work is valued, but Maigret closes cases because of his psychological insight. He is a little like Agatha Christie's Poirot in that respect.
Maigret wants to understand everyone involved in a case, and an important part of that is not being prejudiced just because he doesn’t approve of someone’s behavior. One suspect, Huguet, lives in the Ricains’ building. Huguet maintains sexual relations with his two previous wives, his current third, and he has slept with Sophie, the victim. Huguet seems like a perfect murder suspect: an over-sexed, narcissist. But Maigret questions him dispassionately, respecting his value as a witness, and it is during this conversation that the detective divines the truth. Ricain murdered Sophie because she confronted him with his true character. Ricain considered himself a genius, but he was powerless next to a middling influential man like Carus. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she called him a pimp," Maigret summarizes, "he could not tolerate a truth of that sort being voiced.”
After the killing, Ricain is frightened by looming consequences. But because he is vain, he is determined to get away with the crime. He steals Maigret’s wallet, then immediately returns it in an effort “to lead suspicion away from himself.” But Ricain’s vanity betrays him. He embellishes his story about Sophie’s last evening, including details about a supper, that contradicted stomach content analysis.
The novel ends with a debrief, like Poirot’s drawing room explanations, but it is short. Francis Ricain “would be too unhappy to be thought mad, or even only partially responsible. In the dock, on the other hand, he will be able to play the role of the exceptional being, a sort of hero.” After this brief assessment, Maigret turns towards the window “and gazed at the rain.”
That novel-ending phrase reminds me of the marvelous British TV series, MAIGRET, featuring Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) as the French detective. There’s no clowning around from Atkinson in this show, he is brooding and serious and wrapped in suits and overcoats to insulate him from emotional contact with others. But what I remember most about the series is the beautiful cinematography, how the colors are muted yet saturated, like Algonquin Park after a spring rain.
Maigret smokes a pipe, and comments that a lot of younger men foolishly choose pipes that are unbalanced, with too short a stem and too heavy a bowl. Maigret likes to ride on buses that have an open upper platform, just so he can smoke. He likes to start the day with a glass of white wine and often stops for heavy meals like steak and chips or duck á l’orange, and beer, during the workday. The sheer volume of booze and smokes is striking to a modern reader.
Maigret is a minor celebrity in Paris. He is always featured in news stories about murders, and reporters have created a myth that he sees things ordinary policemen can’t. Maigret isn’t vain, however. He understands that he has a lot of power, and criminals—generally—don’t. Maigret knows that most crimes get solved because of criminal informants. The Paris police seem to have a lot of freedom to harass and intimidate people and apparently, it pays dividends. Maigret says that as a young officer he knew every pickpocket in Paris, even the foreign criminals who flew in for big special events. Habitual criminals treated arrest and incarceration as a natural part of doing business and regularly ratted on each other to lessen sentences.
But despite their inordinate power, the police are not heartless. In MAIGRET AND THE PICKPOCKET, two people could be prosecuted for procuring an abortion, but that’s never threatened or even considered. The young murder suspect, Francis Ricain, says he doesn’t want to go to jail because he is claustrophobic, so Maigret puts him up in a hotel for a couple of days. Maigret also buys him meals, cigarettes, brandy, and lends him small amounts of money.
To a certain extent, crime in 1960s Paris is homey and cozy. Maigret gets phone calls from magistrates who want immediate arrests but, generally, he’s allowed to operate as he thinks fit. Maigret’s subordinate officers are helpful and polite (a refreshing change from toxic British workplaces) Parisian citizens are cooperative, and no one begrudges the police their authority.
But murder is murder. Sophie Ricain is shot in the face, and the body is covered with flies when it is discovered. A special team is called in to decontaminate the apartment with formol, a particularly unpleasant chemical. Maigret observes that Sophie “was fairly ordinary, moderately pretty. Her toenails were painted red but had not been attended to for quite a long time, because the varnish was cracked, and the nails were not scrupulously clean.”
Even though Maigret has a lot of sympathy for the people involved, crime is grubby, and the inspector wears his moral superiority like a spring jacket.
Maigret’s investigative technique is to learn as much as he can about the people intimately involved in the crime. That involves interviews, certainly, but also simple observation of people interacting, during meals, for example. Maigret also frequently returns to the crime scene, just to hang around and absorb impressions from the physical surroundings.
The Ricains wanted to break into the movies, but they were at the mercy of unscrupulous producers like Carus. Carus gives Sophie a few walk-on parts then keeps her as a part-time mistress. Carus regularly “lends” Francis Ricain money and gives him some minor work as third assistant director but dangles the prospect of bigger and better things. Essentially, Francis is pimping his wife and Sophie hates him for it, even though she is a willing participant.
The Maigret books are a little like the Swedish Martin Beck series in that both principal detectives are plodders rather than superheroes. They’re quiet, calm, and unemotional. The major difference is that Maigret is happily married, without children, and the relationship is enough to sustain him. He doesn’t have close work friendships like Beck has with Kolberg, there’s always a clear division between Maigret, the boss, and his subordinates.
Maigret isn’t Sherlock Holmes. In A STUDY IN SCARLET, Holmes claims to be able to identify 140 different types of cigar ash. Holmes stores and cross-references data like a modern computer system. (And to be fair, Holmes is also imaginative in his interpretation of evidence. Toe prints found in THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES mean that Sir Charles was running away from something, not tiptoeing to eavesdrop, as the local police assume.)
Maigret doesn’t do any of that close forensics work, he delegates it to others. In MAIGRET AND THE PICKPOCKET he has frogmen retrieve a revolver from the Seine, dust the Ricain’s apartment for fingerprints, and canvas their apartment building for witnesses. There is a bullet trajectory reconstruction, and Sophie’s stomach contents are analyzed. That police work is valued, but Maigret closes cases because of his psychological insight. He is a little like Agatha Christie's Poirot in that respect.
Maigret wants to understand everyone involved in a case, and an important part of that is not being prejudiced just because he doesn’t approve of someone’s behavior. One suspect, Huguet, lives in the Ricains’ building. Huguet maintains sexual relations with his two previous wives, his current third, and he has slept with Sophie, the victim. Huguet seems like a perfect murder suspect: an over-sexed, narcissist. But Maigret questions him dispassionately, respecting his value as a witness, and it is during this conversation that the detective divines the truth. Ricain murdered Sophie because she confronted him with his true character. Ricain considered himself a genius, but he was powerless next to a middling influential man like Carus. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she called him a pimp," Maigret summarizes, "he could not tolerate a truth of that sort being voiced.”
After the killing, Ricain is frightened by looming consequences. But because he is vain, he is determined to get away with the crime. He steals Maigret’s wallet, then immediately returns it in an effort “to lead suspicion away from himself.” But Ricain’s vanity betrays him. He embellishes his story about Sophie’s last evening, including details about a supper, that contradicted stomach content analysis.
The novel ends with a debrief, like Poirot’s drawing room explanations, but it is short. Francis Ricain “would be too unhappy to be thought mad, or even only partially responsible. In the dock, on the other hand, he will be able to play the role of the exceptional being, a sort of hero.” After this brief assessment, Maigret turns towards the window “and gazed at the rain.”
That novel-ending phrase reminds me of the marvelous British TV series, MAIGRET, featuring Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) as the French detective. There’s no clowning around from Atkinson in this show, he is brooding and serious and wrapped in suits and overcoats to insulate him from emotional contact with others. But what I remember most about the series is the beautiful cinematography, how the colors are muted yet saturated, like Algonquin Park after a spring rain.
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