Maigret Roma Nr.44

Maigret and the Secretive Village
Review of the Penguin Classics paperback (October 2018) of a new translation* by Linda Coverdale of the French language original "Maigret à l'école" (1954)

"What would you like to eat, Chief Inspector?"
"Do you have oysters?"
"Not during the neap-tide."
"How long will that last?"
"Another five or six days."
Since Paris, he'd been thinking of eating oysters and drinking white wine, and now he probably wasn't going to get any during his stay.

A school teacher from a coastal village appears in Chief Inspector Maigret's office at Quai des Orfèvres and begs for his assistance. A retired ex-post mistress in the village has been murdered and, although she was hated by the entire village, the teacher is also disliked as he and his family are outsiders. Maigret remembers with fondness meals of oysters and white wine during an earlier seaside trip and agrees to return to the town with the teacher and to try to clear his name.

Arriving at the village Maigret learns that he is unlikely to enjoy a meal of oysters, but he persists in the case regardless. He soon discovers that the ex-postmistress was a snoop who knew the secrets of the villagers, having read their mail. The entire village appears to have closed ranks to blame the schoolteacher due to him not being one of their own. The solution seems to centre on children in the school class, one of whom is the prime witness against the teacher. But are they telling the truth or are they lying for some mysterious reason of their own?

See cover image at https://www.trussel.com/maig/covers/ecole3.jpg
The cover of the original French language edition of "Maigret à l'école" as published by Presses de la Cité, France 1954. Image sourced from Maigret of the Month.

During a 2022 mini-binge I read a couple of dozen of the (mostly early) Maigret novellas and then about a half-dozen of Simenon's non-Maigret romans durs (French: hard novels). I'm reading a few more of the Maigrets in 2023 as I found a bunch of them in cutout sales at my local Book City stores.

In a rarity for completists, this is Maigret #44 in both the recent Penguin Classics Series of new translations (2013-2019) of the Inspector Maigret novels and in the previous standard Maigret Series Listopia as listed on Goodreads.

See photo at https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2017/12/maigret-rowan...
Rowan Atkinson as Inspector Maigret in the most recent television adaptation of Maigret which only aired for 4 episodes in 2016-17. Playing against his standard comic stereotypes, Atkinson was actually quite excellent in the role. Image sourced from an article at Radio Times, which says that a possible future Maigret reboot series is in the works.

Footnote, Trivia and Links
* The earlier English translation (Hamish Hamilton 1957) by Daphne Woodward & its later reprints also gave the title as Maigret Goes to School.

There is extensive background and a detailed plot description (spoilers obviously) about Maigret Goes to School at Maigret of the Month.

Maigret Goes to School has been adapted three times for television:
The first adaptation was as Series 1 Episode 13 (1971) of the long-running French language series Les enquêtes du commissaire Maigret (1967-1990) starring Jean Richard as Inspector Maigret.

The second adaptation was as Series 1 Episode 3 (1992) of the English language television series of Maigret (1992-1993) starring Michel Gambon as Inspector Maigret.

The third adaptation was as Series 12 Episode 1 (2002) of the French language reboot series of Maigret (1991-2005) starring Bruno Cremer as Inspector Maigret.

There is an article about the Penguin Classics re-translations of the Inspector Maigret novels at Maigret, the Enduring Appeal of the Parisian Sleuth by Paddy Kehoe, RTE, August 17, 2019. ( )

Après plusieurs Maigret, des schémas et pattern récurrents transparaissent et permettent de mieux évaluer et jauger les différents volumes. Et cette histoire m’a semblé assez emblématique, même si elle ne se passe pas à Paris, mais en Bretagne où le commissaire se rend, motivé par une grosse envie d’huître et de vin blanc.

Un commissaire empathique, bonhomme, qui passe son temps à boire des verres, causer le bout de gras et se promener jusqu’à ce qu’un plan se dessine de lui-même et que l’évidence apparaisse ( )

En Maigret va a la ecuela, un siceso escabroso sumerge al célebre comisario en el mundo de su infancia y en la hermética realidad que impregna la Francia rural. En este paisaje anclado en el tiempo, representado por la localidad costera de Saint-André-sur-Mer, el plácido devenir cotidiano se ve brutalmente perturbado por el asesinato de una de sus vecinas más odiadas. Perseguido por el anhelo constante de degustar unas ostras acompañadas por un vino blanco, Maigret tendrá que ir afinando su olfato. Porque sólo de su sagacidad y astucia depende que la verdad salga a la luz.

45. Maigret Goes to School by Georges Simenon. The Inspector is visited by a schoolmaster who believes he's about to be formally accused of murdering his village postmistress, who was found in her home with a bullet through the eye. He's right.
It seems that the only reason the schoolmaster is arrested is because one of his pupils placed him in a location to have committed the crime, while the man says he's been accused because he's a hated newcomer to the village. Maigret doesn't know what to think about the crime, but a little excursion to the country for oysters and wine sounds good, and he might look into the murder. ( )