“Having had a glass of rum the night before, he decided to order the same again. Actually he ordered two. They were very small glasses.”
Poor Maigret is fighting a cold, or maybe even the flu, and it’s making him grumpy. Imagine, downing that rum instead of his beloved beer, he must be ill. The stuffy head and fevers are distracting him, making unraveling this murder case a little harder than it needed to be.
He was finishing up with a young man who had beaten his grandmother to death when he got called to come in on a high-profile case. A wealthy wine merchant was murdered outside the discreet brothel he was in the habit of frequenting. From there on out, it was downhill for Maigret. The murdered man and his friends were rich and without much in the way of morals. There seemed to be too many suspects, since the wine merchant was a womanizer of the highest order and the jealous husbands and boyfriends must number in the dozens.
I have not been reading the Maigrets in any chronological order since I’ve just been collecting them as I can. And for the most part it doesn’t seem to be a big detriment. Maigret is Maigret. His pipe and his beer and liking to know what Mrs. Maigret is making for lunch before he leaves for work so he has something to look forward to. What was interesting about this book was how the world has moved on. It was written in 1969, so there were mini skirts and computers and wife-swapping. I’m not making that up! When the computer thing came up 20 or 30 pages in, I had to stop and go whaaaa? then go look to see the publication date. At the end of the book it is confirmed it was finished in September of 1969. I had to laugh. Maigret was still in early post-war France in my head until that point. What a delight to be surprised again by the incomparable Georges Simenon.
