The Hotel Majestic (Penguin Mysteries) [Paperback]

 

 

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Georges Simenon was the author of over 100 Inspector Maigret mystery stories. They were immensely popular in the 1930s through the 1960s. Inspector Maigret stories also appeared in film and TV version. Simenon also authored dozens of books described as "romans durs", `hard stories' that had a darker tone than his Maigret novels. Simenon seems to have fallen under the radar in recent decades but in recent years he seems to have been rediscovered by a new generation of mystery/detective story fans. Penguin Books has begun to reissue some of those Maigret mysteries and the New York Review of Books Press has reissued some of his `hard stories', dark novels that did not feature Inspector Maigret. Penguin's latest Inspector Maigret Mystery reissue, "The Hotel Majestic" is as good a place to start for anyone wishing to discover (or re-discover) Simenon.

As with most police procedurals, the Hotel Majestic begins with a dead body. Mrs. Clark, a guest traveling with her wealthy American husband, their child and a governess, has been found murdered and stuffed into an empty locker in the basement of the Hotel Majestic. Maigret arrives to begin the investigation. His investigation quickly draws him into two parallel words: the world upstairs of champagne and caviar and the world downstairs filled with hotel employees eking out a living. Maigret's investigation begins with an examination into how and why these two different worlds collided in this brief but deadly incident. From there he proceeds to interview everyone and anyone who might have information about the crime of the victim. Maigret is no Sherlock Holmes. For Maigret, crimes are to be solved by a process of accumulating as much information as possible and then analyzing that information based on his past experience. Maigret plays hunches to be sure but Maigret's chief weapon is perseverance and determination. Consequently, the reader is presented with information about the crime and the protagonists in real time along with Maigret. As I read these stories I find myself absorbing these bits of information and trying to weigh them against the information previously disclosed. This served to keep me engaged throughout the book and caused me to keep turning page after page until the `final curtain'.

Simenon has a keen ear for dialogue and character development. Maigret is not a character that is revealed to the reader immediately. Simenon doesn't set about to provide you with a character map to Maigret's personality in any one book. Rather, he grows on you over time. He has an innate disdain for higher authority that is appealing. Simenon's settings and other characters also add a dash to his Maigret mysteries. These are not parlor room mysteries where the reader has to determine which upper-class member of the gentry (or the butler) committed murder most foul in the library. Simenon's stories have the feel of grit and the demimonde about them that adds a bit of spice to the `formula'. In Hotel Majestic, Simenon's description of the hard-streets and dark bars of Paris and the people that inhabit them all seem quite fully realized to me.

All in all, I find Simenon's Maigret mysteries to be consistently entertaining. They may not be as dark or foreboding as the novels released by New York Review of Books - but it you like well-written, taut, police procedurals you will like Georges Simenon's Hotel Majestic. Recommended. L. Fleisig

I think this is the best Maigret novel I've read so far. As with most of Simenon's mysteries he leads you among a cast of characters with dubious pasts and criminal secrets, presenting the clues in such a subtle way you overlook them, before revealing the murderer to the reader. Unlike a couple of the other mysteries this was not as confusing and had a satisfying solution.

This is my first experience of Maigret, but it won't be my last. Simenon sets a wonderful scene, a Paris of decadence, hard nosed cops who still have a sense of decency and honour code and the seedy underbelly of the city rubbing against the Paris of tourism and history. If this is typical of Maigret don't expect hardboiled, gory story lines or you will be disappointed. Maigret is fairly taciturn, clearly brilliant and like Hercule Poirot, a man interested in exercising his little grey cells.

These are wonderful, old fashioned murder mystery stories which are just the thing after a busy day at the coal face and which are soothing as well as enthralling.

Here Maigret is called into the understairs world of the Hotel Majestic, where one of the guests is found strangled and stuffed in the locker of the changing rooms. Another murder follows swiftly on its heels, and what at first seems like a routine and obvious murder enquiries, takes some interesting cerebral twists before coming to a satisfying conclusion.

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