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Penguin delivers two more vintage Inspector Maigret novels by the legendary mystery author In The Hotel Majestic, Maigret investigates the murder of Mrs. Clark, the wife of a wealthy American industrialist, whose strangled body is found in the basement of an upscale hotel near the Champs-Elysees. Maigret's inquiries take him from the endless corridors of the Hotel Majestic to the countryside of the Bois de Boulogne and sun-drenched Cannes, into a world of prostitution, drug addiction, and show more blackmail.. show less
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My first Maigret, which is kind of unbelievable given how much I like mid-century mystery, but there you go. I chose it somewhat randomly from my library's collection. It is #20, but all the books are basically standalone, so I was fine. Apparently there have been retcons and other variations across the years, but I was ignorant.
Maigret is called to investigate the murder of a wealthy American woman whose strangled body is found in the basement work areas of the luxury Hotel Majestic. She turns out not to be American, and suspicion falls on Prosper Donge, the still-room employee who has a connection to her. But her (genuinely American) husband and her son's governess are having an affair, so what about them?
Unraveling the connections show more and solving the mystery requires Maigret to investigate all kinds of Majestic employees, as well as take a quick trip to Cannes to check out Prosper's previous job and friends.
Like so many before me, I loved Maigret. He is a terrific character who figures things out by paying attention to the people around him, listening, and sifting through clues. He's confident but not hubris-filled, and he has a happy marriage. Zut alors! And Simenon's evocation of Paris and Parisians is wonderful. The style is compact and minimalist, with no wasted words.
I am so happy that I have dozens more ahead of me, not to mention the non-Maigrets. show less
Maigret is called to investigate the murder of a wealthy American woman whose strangled body is found in the basement work areas of the luxury Hotel Majestic. She turns out not to be American, and suspicion falls on Prosper Donge, the still-room employee who has a connection to her. But her (genuinely American) husband and her son's governess are having an affair, so what about them?
Unraveling the connections show more and solving the mystery requires Maigret to investigate all kinds of Majestic employees, as well as take a quick trip to Cannes to check out Prosper's previous job and friends.
Like so many before me, I loved Maigret. He is a terrific character who figures things out by paying attention to the people around him, listening, and sifting through clues. He's confident but not hubris-filled, and he has a happy marriage. Zut alors! And Simenon's evocation of Paris and Parisians is wonderful. The style is compact and minimalist, with no wasted words.
I am so happy that I have dozens more ahead of me, not to mention the non-Maigrets. show less
A nice, undemanding novel-length Maigret from the late thirties/early forties (No.41 in the usual lists), with a below-stairs setting in a big Parisian luxury hotel. Fun to see that the arrangements in the hotel basement in those days still include a dining-room reserved for the personal valets and maids of guests staying in the hotel! A guest's body is discovered in a locker in the staff changing-room, and the obvious suspect is Prosper Donge, the man in charge of the hotel's coffee and tea service. The Examining Magistrate arrests him and assumes the case is closed, but Maigret isn't so sure...
Light and fun. It did take me a little while to stop longing for a crime procedural, where you actually get to see and hear more of the actual investigating, instead of the information just being presented. (Case in point: the lengthy speech one woman delivers with barely any prompting by Maiget.) Once I got over that, though, I could enjoy the mystery more, and it was good for my French as well.
Although The Cellars of the Majestic is the 20th novel in Georges Simenon’s series featuring Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, The Cellars of the Majestic is set before Pietr the Latvian, the first-ever Maigret novel. Sergeant Torrence, killed in that first novel, is alive and well in this novel.
Maigret investigates the death of Mimi Clark, the beautiful French-born wife of a Detroit industrialist. Although quite wealthy since her marriage six years ago to the American Oswald Clark, Mimi turns up strangled in the cellar of the Hotel Majestic, a ritzy hotel off the Champs-Élysées — a place frequented by the hotel’s staff, not the well-to-do guests, and especially not at 6 o’clock in the morning, when she was killed.
Despite show more some stumbling on the part of a naïve examining magistrate, in the end, Maigret ensures that justice is done. Another most satisfying novel for longtime fans and newcomers alike. show less
Maigret investigates the death of Mimi Clark, the beautiful French-born wife of a Detroit industrialist. Although quite wealthy since her marriage six years ago to the American Oswald Clark, Mimi turns up strangled in the cellar of the Hotel Majestic, a ritzy hotel off the Champs-Élysées — a place frequented by the hotel’s staff, not the well-to-do guests, and especially not at 6 o’clock in the morning, when she was killed.
Despite show more some stumbling on the part of a naïve examining magistrate, in the end, Maigret ensures that justice is done. Another most satisfying novel for longtime fans and newcomers alike. show less
Una delle inchieste di Maigret che mi è piaciuta di più. Un bell'intrecciarsi di esistenze, il fato che ci mette sempre lo zampino, un Maigret che arresta il suo colpevole cenando con lui. Bello, mi è piaciuto tanto quanto il caso Saint Fiacre.
As always, a solid entry. I would love to know if there was ever an explanation on why in one novel Maigret is retired in the country, and the next he is back in Paris. I am reading them in the order they were re-released by Penguin, but hopefully the next one is the one originally written after Simenon decided to bring Maigret back, a la Doyle and Holmes.
Confronted by the body of a wealthy American woman in a hotel locker room Maigret immerses himself in the atmosphere and gradually discovers the the obvious suspect has been the victim of a clever forger.
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The prolific Belgian-born writer Georges Simenon produced hundreds of fictional works under his own name and 17 pseudonyms, in addition to more than 70 books about Inspector Maigret, long "the favorite sleuth of highbrow detective-story readers" (SR). More than 50 "Simenons" have been made into films. In addition to his mystery stories, he wrote show more what he called "hard" books, the serious psychological novels numbering well over 100. The autobiographical Pedigree, set in his native town of Liege, is perhaps his finest work. The publication of Simenon's intimate memoirs also attracted considerable attention. Simenon himself once said that he would never write a "great novel." Yet Gide called him "a great novelist, perhaps the greatest and truest novelist we have in French literature today," and Thornton Wilder (see Vol. 1) found that Simenon's narrative gift extends "to the tips of his fingers." The following are some of Simenon's novels, exclusive of the Maigret detective stories, that are in print. (Bowker Author Biography) Georges Simenon was born on February 13, 1903 in Liege, Belgium. He wrote more than 200 fiction works under 16 different pseudonyms. His first book, The Case of Peter the Lent led to 80 more of the like including the main character, Inspector Maigret. He published over 400 books that were translated into 50 different languages and sold by the millions. He also wrote psychological novels, including The Man Who Watched the Train Go By. He died on September 4, 1989 in Lausanne. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Maigret and the Hotel Majestic
- Original title
- Les caves du Majestic
- Alternate titles
- The Cellars of the Majestic; The Hotel Majestic
- Original publication date
- 1942; 1977 (English translation) (English translation)
- People/Characters
- Jules Maigret; Louise Maigret; Prosper Donge
- Important places
- Parigi, Francia; Cannes, Provenza-Alpi-Costa Azzurra, Francia; Francia; Hotel Majestic, Paris, France
- Related movies*
- Les caves du Majestic (1944 | IMDb); Les caves du Majestic (1987 | IMDb); Maigret et les caves du Majestic (1993 | IMDb); The Cellars of the Majestic (1963 | IMDb); Maigret and the Hotel Majestic (1993 | IMDb)
- First words
- A car door slamming.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Or from being lucky for the first time in his life, because owing to his poor state of health - he fainted three times during the final hearing - his death sentence was commuted to transportation with hard labour for life.
- Original language*
- Francese
- Disambiguation notice
- In the French original, Les Caves du Majestic (1942, with earlier serial publication).
Variously published in English as:
(i) Maigret and the Hotel Majestic (1977) (trans. Caroline Hillier) a... (show all)nd;
(ii) The Cellars of the Majestic (2015) (trans. Howard Curtis).
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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