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Post by pimpinainteasy on Oct 31, 2017 12:46:50 GMT
any fans?
reading my friend maigret now.
unusual but quite good. clash of cultures in a beautiful island filled with eccentric people as maigret and a trainee british policeman try to solve a murder mystery. i think it can be said to be a novel of manners.
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Post by Nalkarj on Mar 27, 2018 3:36:37 GMT
I’m never quite sure what to make of Simenon. There are just so many books, and I’ve often read a few, but they don’t seem “my thing,” for better or worse. The early books, from the ‘30s, are very much traditional detective-stories (as were in vogue at the time—“when every Cabinet minister had a thriller by his bedside, and all the detectives were titled,” as Andrew Wyke would put it)—in the Croftsian mold, with lots of elaborate alibis and transportation time-tables (more often boats, not trains as with Crofts). In these books, Maigret was in many ways the Francophone equivalent of Crofts’s Insp. French—not some kind of amateur deductive genius but a painstaking professional. Then in the ‘40s Simenon dedicates himself fully to the “crime novel,” the sort of thing Julian Symons praised—where the focus is not on detecting the crime but rather on the character of the criminal. Simenon changed this a bit by focusing as much, if not more so, on Maigret’s character, but the basic format is the same. Then as the series goes on the books become fairly straightforward procedurals, though the focus on Maigret is kept. I’m not a big fan of procedurals other than Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series, which avoided tedium by some really great characters and gripping stories, and the Dragnet radio series. (I would not count Columbo as a procedural.)
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Bargle
Sophomore
My incredibly life-like self-portrait
@bargle
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Post by Bargle on Mar 27, 2018 15:58:49 GMT
Read several of his years ago. Enjoyed them.
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Post by nutsberryfarm 🏜 on Apr 23, 2018 17:39:25 GMT
actually just read his one set in the usa, in arizona, 'maigret at the coroner's', pretty funny in a darkly comic way.
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Post by staggerstag on Jun 11, 2019 23:46:10 GMT
I've only read one. 'Trois Chambres à Manhattan' or 'Three Rooms in Manhattan' (1945) I remember it being quite a short novel and most enjoyable.
Fun fact : In the 1965 black and white film adaptation, one of the clients during where they have dinner was played by Robert De Niro, though he was not credited.
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Post by nutsberryfarm 🏜 on Jun 12, 2019 0:02:23 GMT
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