The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien (Inspector Maigret) Paperback – April 1, 2014

The Inspector Maigret books by Georges Simenon are to say the least, exquisite in their wake and poignant in their sweep. The third book in the series, “The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien” is no exception. Possessing un-envisaged twists and unpredictable turns, Inspector Maigret’s strange trysts – experienced within the geographies of Belgium and France- with three peculiarly intense individuals, “The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien” is an absolute ripper.The book begins in the most non-decrepit of settings. A quaint railway station situated at the border separating Netherlands from Germany. “For Gare de Neuschanz is at the northern tip of Holland, on the German border. A railway station of no importance. Neuschanz is barely a village. It isn’t on any main railway line. A few trains come through mostly in the morning and evening, carrying German workers attracted by the high wages paid in Dutch factories.”A ‘suspicious’ tramp carrying a battered suitcase is followed by Inspector Maigret. The shabby individual purchases a ticket to Bremen, and while waiting for the train to arrive frequents the wash room at the waiting lounge. Unbeknownst to the traveler, Inspector Maigret replaces the battered suitcase being conveyed by the tramp with an identical one stuffed with newspapers. Maigret also succeeds in booking himself a room adjacent to the one checked into by the shoddy traveler. However, Maigret is in for a rude shock when the traveler upon realizing that his suitcase has been pilfered and replaced with a fake replica, pulls out a revolver and shoots himself.Maigret’s quandary is further exacerbated when all he finds in the tramp’s briefcase are a pair of crumpled dirty shirts and a blood stained suit worn by repeated use. A scribbled note retrieved by Maigret takes him to Belgium and an unanticipated acquaintance with three individuals of varied character, social standing and disposition. Joseph Van Damme, Import-Export Commission Agent; Belloir, the Deputy Director of a Bank and Jef Lombard a photo engraver. What could be the connecting link between the miserable man who took his own life and three genteel, refined and sophisticated individuals?When Maigret experiences two attempts at murder, he becomes convinced that there is someone with a murky secret who wants Maigret out of the way at any and every cost. How Maigret gets to the bottom of the riddle forms the rest of Simenon’s gripping tale.Writing in a style that is crisp, matter-of-fact and bereft of convoluted references, Simenon’s book is a veritable treat for his readers. For example, in describing about an inherent human nature of Schadenfreude, Simenon writes, “‘When there’s a fire, onlookers can’t help wanting it to last, to be a spectacular fire, and when the river is rising, newspaper readers hope for major flooding they can talk about for the next twenty years. They want something interesting, and it doesn’t matter what! Or when describing the setting of the morgue where the unfortunate suicide victim’s body is placed – “More sinister precisely because of its sharp, clean lines and perspectives, the uniform white of the walls, which reflected a harsh light, and the refrigeration units as shiny as machines in a power station. The place looked like a model factory: one where the raw material was human bodies.”“The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien displays both the selfless and selfish sides characterizing a fictitious tragedy. More than anything else it brings to the fore, the extraordinary prowess of a natural writer who wields his pen to produce near miraculous outcomes.

At this point, I've read the first several Penguin reissues of Inspector Maigret novels, and I must admit this one is among my favorites. Quite by chance, Maigret pursues a mystery sparked by his own whim and winds up confronting the essences of guilt and justice. My only serious complaint -- and it appears to be a fault of all the Simenon novels I've read so far -- is that Maigret seems too omniscient, and the solution of the mystery is just dropped into our lap out of the blue, rather than meaningfully teased from the narrative. Still, that shortcoming is more than compensated for by the characters, mood and scenes portrayed in the story.

This is not a real case. Rather, it's Maigret pursuing a plethora of fishy circumstances and suspicious characters because he senses the possibility of a crime.The plot begins with a suicide in a seedy hotel room. Maigret, who has been tailing the young man, fears he may be have driven the poor fellow to this desperate act. Maigret's guilty feelings foreshadow a mounting sense of morbid guilt pervading the story.There are wonderful descriptions in this book of Maigret's ability to feign bovine stupidity or project menace, whichever is most likely to rattle his prey. I loved the description of him as resembling "a pachyderm plodding inexorably toward its goal."Although this is a murder mystery, it reminds me of Simenon's psychological novels - with its moral ambiguities, emotionally charged atmosphere, and tormented characters. Maigret's state of mind is as interesting and complicated as those of the other players. The dogged inspector searches for clues in Brussels, Germany, and France. The plethora of languages contributes to his sense of isolation and frustration, since he doesn't always understand what's being said.The new Penguin edition of The Hanged Man of Saint Pholien is good news for Simenon fans. In my search for every Maigret mystery, I never found it. The book was written in 1930, at the inception of the Maigret series.Maigret is at his cruelest and his kindest in this book. It's a masterful piece of writing, stylistically perfect.

Not one this authors better ideas ... great lead up but that’s it

"The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholen," previously issued in English as "Maigret and the Hundred Gibbets," is one of Georges Simenon's most impressive mysteries in the sizable Maigret oeuvre. It is also one of the least known. And the reason for this may not be hard to find, for typical police forensic details are missing as are the classic interrogations for which Jules Maigret of the Paris Police Judiciaire is well known. In fact, the book largely lacks a sense of activity if one excludes the numerous train rides that Maigret makes in pursuing this case across Belgium, France, and GermanyIn this most unusual case, Maigret stumbles upon some suspicious behavior and inadvertently causes a troubled individual to commit suicide. As the detective tries to reconstruct the life of the deceased, he uncovers a ten-year old tragedy. His inquiry in turn causes psychological pressure to build on the men originally connected to that tragedy. The denouement of the story cannot possibly be anticipated, despite the fact that the deceased's recent activity as a blackmailer comes as no surprise. Maigret's humanity in wrapping up the case is utterly satisfying and speaks to Simenon's success in having created a fully-formed, complex personality for his detective from the very outset of the series.

This early Maigret novella by Simenon splits the difference between a detective story and a novel of crime, remorse, and the dark side of human nature. Later Simenon would distinguish more sharply his Maigret mysteries from his 'Romans durs' as he termed his more literary and bleaker novellas.

I have been planning to read an Inspector Maigret book after having seen several movies and TV episodes. The book is better as you can understand what he is thinking. The case was a mystery to the end.

Possibly a bit pricey, but if you love Maigret, or a standard detective story, it may be worth it.

In a cheap Bremen hotel, Chief Inspector Maigret is the unexpected witness to the suicide of a man at the room next door. Maigret was observing his movements through the keyhole of the door that separated both rooms. Maigret is not far -in fact he is quite close – from thinking that he’s just killed a man. It all begun the previous day in Brussels where Maigrest had been sent for consultation with the Belgian police about some Italian refugee who had been expelled from France and whose activities were now cause for concern. In fact Maigret himself can`t quite understand still why he was following that man. The fact is that the man in question took that decision after realising that his small and cheap suitcase had been replaced by another one exactly the same, that was filled with old newspapers. However Maigret, who was expecting to find inside the man’s suitcase the evidence to prove that the man in question was a dangerous criminal, perhaps a murderer, was able to find only a worn-out man’s suit and some dirty laundry. To further complicate matters, the suit was too large to belong to the owner of the suitcase and soon it became clear he was travelling under a false identity. Perhaps motivated by a certain sense of guilt, Maigret is determined to find an explanation to all this.The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien is the third book in the new Penguin Maigret series. Although occasionally it shows up in a different order in Maigret canon. This is probably due to the fact that the fist ten books in the series were all published initially in 1931. In any case the order in itself is rather irrelevant, at least when it comes to these first books. With regard to this book Maigret himself, when Sergeant Lucas asked him about this case, puts it this way: ‘I hardly know myself!’ the inspector exclaimed. ‘A very strange fellow died in a way that makes no sense, right in front of me – and that incident is all tied up in the most ungodly tangle of events, which I’m attempting to figure out. I’m charging blindly at it like a wild boar and wouldn’t be surprised if I wound up getting my knuckles rapped… …’ In a sense the story is rather a riddle than to detective fiction that tackles the issue of human motivations. The plot revolves around the psychology of the characters more than about the police action itself. I particularly liked the atmosphere in which the action unfolds. It’s not a whodunit, but rather an investigation to discover if there’s any crime behind the behaviour of certain characters. And though it might not be yet up to the best books in the series, I have enjoyed it very much. The main theme of the novel will be recurrent in Simenon’s work, there’s no greatest punishment for the criminal than the crime itself. To conclude I would like to point out that in this instalment the reader will find one of the earliest descriptions of Maigret.

Simenon novels are slim and engrossing- with a great intellectual flavour- but not at all cheap. Thanks to penguin and discounts they are now once again available.

It's marvellous that all the Maigret books are being re-issued in order. This, the first of the series, is an excellent introduction to Maigret's character and method of working, with an intricate plot that makes the brain work.It's also a superb evocation of Paris in the 1930s, that brooding and ominous decade.