"The Bar on the Seine" by Georges Simenon

An interesting thing happened on my way to reading Georges Simenon’s THE BAR ON THE SEINE: I discovered a new classic author, with accompanying classic fictional character (Inspector Jules Maigret), of whom I had never heard.  Indeed, Simenon, born in 1903 of Belgian heritage, penning 75 novels with Inspector Maigret and selling 850 million copies of his books (not to mention the numerous film and television adaptations) earns the right for those familiar with all his works to grant him the titles of ‘greatest novelist of twentieth century France’ and ‘one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century European literature’.

Having only read THE BAR ON THE SEINE, such accolades would be too presumptuous to offer from myself.  I cannot say, from the mere numbers of his prolific writing career, whether he is a European treasure in the literature realm or not.  However, what I can say is mystery lovers will not be disappointed.

The book starts off with Inspector Maigret visiting a prisoner in jail.  Jean Lenoir, a young man in his early twenties, is awaiting news as to whether his appeal will be granted.  When Maigret informs him that it will not, the execution will proceed, Lenoir proceeds to tell Maigret there are others who deserve it just as much as him.  Six years earlier, he and a friend witnessed a man dumping a body into the river.  They blackmailed the man until he disappeared from sight, only to resurface within the past few months at the guinguette a deux sous, where Lenoir saw him.

Maigret had never heard of the guinguette a deux sous, and neither had anyone he asked.  It was a phantom location until he encountered Monsieur Basso, a man who offered the name as where he and his friends were doing “a little play-acting”.  Maigret follows Basso and becomes part of the “play-acting’ through a man named ‘James’, an unconventional participant in this weekend escape at the guinguette a deux sous. 

He meets all the players, through their little drama, and, eventually, one of these people is killed.  The man caught with the murder weapon is Monsieur Basso, who frantically repudiates any connection to the murder.  He even escapes from the police, and now the hunt is on.

What, though, is Maigret hunting? 

The dead body dumped into the river - told to him by Lenoir before his execution - that trail has gone nowhere.  The new murder, seen by himself, lends to more than just the existential plotline one might find in any standard mystery. 

Though Basso was seen with the gun in his hand, there is more to this than the obvious.  And when James aids in the escape of Basso’s wife and child from their home, where the police were watching, something deeper is going on than simply one man killing another.  Is there a connection between the dead body Lenoir saw six years earlier with this current one murdered under Maigret’s nose?  Read the book.  If mysteries are your thing, Georges Simenon, has a story to tell.