Uncle Jules to the rescue!

It was nice to be called Jules Maigret and be the ace of the French police, the time of retirement one day ends up sounding! So that's our dear Commissioner to chill out on the side of Meung-sur-Loire, with his wife Lady! Farewell the quays of the Seine, smoky office of the PJ, nights stash with Lucas or January, the wanderings or Pigalle in Montmartre, beer-quick sandwich break between interviews! Now is the time of relaxation, quiet evenings by the fire, indolent afternoons to tease the stud pipe in mouth ... Except that here, for a winter night, without warning, Philippe Lauer, a nephew Maigret, himself inspector in Paris, arrives distraught at Uncle Jules and asks his help ... During an investigation Palestrino Pepito, the boss of a Paris nightclub, Philip found himself enclosed in said Pepito box while being murdered and everything now seems to accuse him of the murder ... Neither one nor two, Maigret puts on his overcoat and management Paname which illustrates retiree will recover quickly, as of course, for all its old reflexes get to the truth ...

When Simenon created Maigret, he thought dedicate a series of works, certainly, but not make the companion of his life as a writer. Maigret represented in his eyes, a transitional stage, "semi-literary" between its period of popular storyteller and the more serious he aspired to write novels. Between 1931 and 1933, so he brought out 18 Maigret. At the end of the 18th, "The lock No. 1," our dear Jules was retiring and Simenon was about to turn the page for good. Scruples, however, since he worked split in 1934, a 19th opus, this one, he simply titled "Maigret", opus which was this time being the latest ... Actually it was a "false exit" since Simenon, spurred by popular demand, "reactivate" Maigret later (phew ...) and then remain faithful to him until 1972 ... We can say Nevertheless, there has indeed, in the "gesture" Maigret, two periods: the 31-34 period and the post-34 period. As such it closed the first period, which some purists consider also as the best.

What there is interesting in this book, of course, is that Maigret, being retired, is no longer commissioner and leads its purely privately investigation, no legal and judicial framework, without any help official, at least during the first half of the novel. But Commissioner or not, remains first Maigret Maigret, thank you God, that is to say a bloodhound extraordinaire, completely atypical, grouchy, grumpy, smoking pipe after pipe, éclusant halves to the chain, saying little listening a lot, absorbing people and places like a sponge, relying less on physical evidence that his flair, and ultimately behaving less cop that confessor or the psychoanalyst. And it's a bit of a stroll in the land of memories that will offer here our brave Jules. We feel his emotion dawn when, after two years of retirement on the banks of the Loire, it finds the familiar setting where it once took so many surveys. Felt any thing to smell again the smells of Paris, stroll through its streets to haunt bistros, to rub his prostitutes. And of course to come across the familiar faces of former colleagues who shake her ladle in the process.

Add to all this early so personal music Simenon writing and the pleasure is total from the first to the last sentence!