{"id":10108,"date":"2022-11-01T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-01T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10108"},"modified":"2025-10-20T09:09:36","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T13:09:36","slug":"inspector-maigret-a-french-sense-of-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10108","title":{"rendered":"Inspector Maigret: A French Sense of Justice: 2025 Update"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Providing food for thought for authors and readers alike is a recent New Yorker<\/em> piece<\/a> by Adam Gopnik that probes the enduring popularity of Belgian author Georges Simenon and his police inspector Jules Maigret (portrayed above by Michael Gambon). (At the end of this piece is an update on the new PBS Maigret series.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyone who can write five hundred books\u2014seventy-five about his most famous invention, Maigret\u2014must have something to say to us. Simenon attributed his massive output to his stripping away of everything \u201cliterary\u201d from his work\u2014no adjectives! no adverbs! But, as Gopnik points out, his books are full of simple modifiers. What he does not do is comment on the narrative. You might have, as in Gopnik\u2019s example, \u201cThe lethargic blonde cashier\u201d\u2014two adjectives right there\u2014but not \u201cThe lethargic blonde cashier, of a kind you find in every bar of this sort, usually a former dancer . . .\u201d She\u2019s lethargic, she\u2019s blonde. Leave it at that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike the modern police procedural (which I quite like, because I\u2019m fascinated with the details of how people do <\/em>things), Maigret relies more on manipulating the psychology of his suspects. Gopnik suggests they confess out of a sort of collaboration between them and the inspector, rather than because of the weight of forensic evidence. Possibly, in countries where people believed in the power of the confessional, where a priest could intercede with God, a police inspector could intercede with the State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He says, \u201cMaigret knows that people want to tell their stories, and, if prompted, will. Listening, not inquiring, is the detective\u2019s gift.\u201d Here\u2019s where Maigret\u2019s pipe-smoking becomes an investigatory tool. The long drawn-out process of finding a pipe in some pocket, then the tobacco, filling it, finding the matches in some other place, and getting the pipe properly lit, offers ample realms of silence that a suspect may feel compelled to fill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marked differences exist between Maigret\u2019s world and that of detectives in typical American police procedurals. You may have noticed these peculiarities in your reading or capitalized on them in writing set outside the United States. Mostly, as Gopnik says, Maigret is \u201cso French!\u201d What makes him so? He\u2019s a salaried government employee, a functionary, and proud to be one. He doesn\u2019t see the system itself as a problem, just those who try to keep it from working. (No structural problems there. No Don Winslow\u2019s The Force<\/a><\/em>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

American detectives tend to be independent spirits, chafing under official policy, threatened with demotion for insubordination, and the like. With Maigret, it\u2019s the opposite. Maigret is frustrated not by his bosses, but by his underlings, with their inefficiency and dullness of brain.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Maigret also is not afflicted by a mania for justice, or at least he sees that justice comes in many guises, one of which may not be the need for conviction and incarceration. On this point, Gopnik\u2019s argument reminded me of Inspector Montalbano<\/em>, which, in several episodes, the Sicilian detective decides not to follow down a particular case where the situation is resolving itself. Stories set in the U.S. rarely go that way, perhaps only when there\u2019s a particularly worldly-wise sheriff who\u2019s seen it all. \u201cSanctimony and self-righteousness, favored American traits, are disfavored in Simenon\u2019s world.\u201d (This is leaving aside the implacable Inspector Javert, of course.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Put it like this: it’s a world not dominated so much by black and white, but by gray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Penguin has released newly translated paperback versions of the full Maigret series, with covers resembling that of his first Inspector Maigret novel, Pietr the Latvian<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2025 Update<\/strong>: Something should be said about the new PBS series, Maigret<\/em>, airing in the Masterpiece Theater timeslot. All it retains of the original is the title. The world-view, the relationships fall short. The best thing about it is Paris. Watch the opening credits, then pick up a book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Providing food for thought for authors and readers alike is a recent New Yorker piece by Adam Gopnik that probes the enduring popularity of Belgian author Georges Simenon and his police inspector Jules Maigret (portrayed above by Michael Gambon). (At … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"If you could see the world through a detective's eyes, Jules Maigret would give you a very different picture than Harry Bosch.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[62,61,52,1288,54,126],"tags":[2021,728,2020],"class_list":["post-10108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-character","category-crime","category-culture","category-detective","category-reading-2","tag-french-crime-fiction","tag-georges-simenon","tag-inspector-maigret"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2D2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10108"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11658,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10108\/revisions\/11658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}