Maigret on the Defensive

Rating:
Summary: The unthinkable - Maigret accused of horrible wrong-doing.
Review: A more accurate translation of the original might be 'Maigret defends himself', and in this late, autumnal Simenon, we find a hero three years away from retirement, a man who should be lounging on the laurels of a remarkably successful career, accused of getting the orphaned teenage niece of an important state official drunk and taking her to a cheap hotel. There is no real mystery or ambiguity in such a scenario - the idea of a lecherous Maigret is about as plausible as Sherlock Holmes in a Santa suit. As ever with Simenon, the interest is psychological, and Maigret's near-breakdown is superbly conveyed, in the fragmented and delayed way the accusation is given to the reader, disorienting us as much as the detective; and in the way Maigret looks at the world, the interrogator now interrogted, decades of integrity and achievement counting for nothing. There is a brilliant scene after Maigret has been condescendingly accused by an upstart Chief Commissioner in a large, unfamiliar, anonymous office; the sense of literal and spiritual depletion he feels in this silent, cavernous building opens out onto the heightened colour and noise of the streets as he leaves.

'Defensive' is a classic study of middle-age; of the generational conflicts that take place in any large organisation, when the old methods are despised by arrogant young bucks; of the touching, unspoken, nearly-sentimental companionship of trusted old (male) colleagues; of the moral ambiguity of a law-enforcement so dependent on informers; of Paris in broiling summer, devoid of inane romanticism. The most endearing thing about Maigret, alone among the great detectives, is his serene, bourgeois domesticsity, and the moral support given by the wonderful Mme. Maigret may not win many feminist admirers, but is touching nonetheless. A lesser writer might have contrasted this normality with the vicious sexuality that poisons the world outside, and nearly destroys the Superintendent, but both Simenon and Maigret are defined by their tolerance and understanding. Mystery-wise, 'Defensive' seems as slack and shambling as a middle-aged inebriate, and hopelessly old-fashioned for 1964; it is actually as rigorously constructed and thematically thoughtful as we expect from this great writer.