"The Late Monsieur Gallet"

The problem was that nothing about the murder made sense to Inspector Maigret. Monsieur Gallet had been shot, the bullet clearly fired from outside his window. But he died of stab wounds. He died in Sancerre, but he had just sent a postcard to his family from Rouen, some 200 miles away. He seemed to be nearly penniless, but he had provided an insurance policy that would pay his wife 300 thousand francs.

There was quite clearly a great deal that Maigret didn't know about The Late Monsieur Gallet, which was the name of Georges Simenon's second (or perhaps third) book about Inspector Jules Maigret. Originally published in 1931, it has been reissued by Penguin, which is republishing all of Simenon's Maigret novels. The publisher provided a copy for this review. The full review can be heard on today's Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to it by clicking here.

Maigret found the case of the murder of Monsieur Gallet to be difficult. Every time he thought he was making some progress, some other odd facet of the case would turn up, and Maigret would find himself having to begin all over again. That oddity, that wrongness about the case, will eventualy prove the key to the whole mystery.

This is early Maigret, and the overall tone is quite dark. There's not much in the way of happy endings available here. The new translation by Anthea Bell sometimes seems a bit awkward to me - it sounds like a translation rather than more colloquial English, but it's quite serviceable and transmits the events and characters quite well. It's a pretty short book, and I think it's worth your reading time.

Thanks to Sally Powers and the I Love a Mystery newsletter, where a version of this review first appeared, for allowing me to use it here as well.

The Challenge

As part of my continuing commitment to the Vintage Mystery Bingo Reading Challenge under way at the My Reader's Block blog, I am submitting this to cover the Bingo square calling for one translated work. For details about the challenge, and what I'm doing for it, please click here!

Comments

[Margot Kinberg]

Les - I find it interesting how the Maigret mysteries develop over the years. Some of the early ones are, as you say, dark. The later ones aren't quite that dark overall - well, at least not in my opinion. And yet, dark or not, Simenon manages to leave the reader not overburdened, even if the ending isn't happy. That, to me, takes skill. And your comment about the translation is a great reminder that translations really do matter.

[Les Blatt]

I agree completely about the darkness of some of the early Maigrets, Margot. As a general rule, I don't enjoy noir. As you point out, however, Simenon doesn't overburden the reader with it, and I do enjoy the Maigrets overall. And, yes, translations do matter. They're quite difficult to do well; often the translator must decide whether to go with a literal translation of the author's words or be a little more colloquial in English. It's not always a clear or easy choice.