Le Charretier de La Providence (Ldp Simenon) (French Edition) (original 1931; edition 2009)

Maigret at his most typical, doing little watching, learning the atmosphere. and the case solves itself. ( )

Very early Maigret (the second) with lots of nice 1930s French canal atmosphere — horse-drawn barges, lock-side cafés, and a yacht owned by an implausibly decadent former Indian Army colonel. Simenon's research on the canal culture (an area that obviously fascinated him, and which he was to revisit many times in the later Maigret stories) looks spot-on, but he apparently hadn't had much direct experience of les Anglais at that time: a decade or two later he'd have known that you don't address a knight as "Sir Surname"! ( )

I so enjoy Simenon's Maigret novels. This title was first published in 1931. the story is set on the canals and revolves around the characters who live, work and travel on the canals. Maigret relies on a bicycle to investigate the crime and rides many, many miles to investigate clues - the world before mobile phones and the internet. ( )

Set on a French canal between the wars. A story of love and revenge. Guilt and the life force that persists in spite of it. Hard to say if I continue with this series. ( )

In this, the second Maiget novel, one once again sees a world of stereotypes and presumptions about people of different “ethnicities,” levels of education and geographical background. This is even less a mystery than was Simenon’s first Maigret novel--instead it is an exploration of a way of life of which even many people living in France at that time would have been quite unaware. Maigret, or rather Simenon, finds the lives of the working class fascinating and especially the lives of those who have been buffeted about by chance, circumstance and misfortune. At the end Maigret feels no sense of triumph that the murderer has been found out. Simenon does not explore the psychology or methods of his detective but rather uses his experiences to paint as small portrait of a type of life and the people who inhabit it. ( )