Maigret’s Failure by Georges Simenon
Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)
An obnoxious meat king, Ferdinand Fumal, has leaned on the Minister of the Interior to lean on our hero Maigret to help Fumal. Maigret meets Fumal and recognizes him as the bully, coward, and sneak back in his native village of Saint-Fiacre. Since Fumal claims he has received anonymous death threats, Maigret has to help the butcher baron, though it is clear to everybody that knows Fumal that, as they say in Texas, Fumal needs killing.
We get a glimpse of the social milieu wherein Maigret grew up (turn of the century rural France). Simenon gives us a portrait of an unsettled household – for all their money and comfortable stuff, Fumal’s domestic circle roils and churns in sinister ways. “Balzac without the length,” said Marcel Aymé of Simenon.
