The Shadow Puppet (Inspector Maigret)

This novel exemplifies everything I love about Maigret – the way the huge burly inspector lurks in the vicinity of the crime absorbing impressions; his habit of hanging around and chatting aimlessly with potential suspects, casually cranking them up; his unexpected bursts of fondness or compassion for various characters...Maigret claims to have no method, yet his mere presence on the scene is a kind of method. It's great fun to watch him rattling a suspect with an expression of stupidity, an air of inattention, or a sudden roughness of manner. The unhurried pace of his investigation is always something to savor.In this story, he grows unaccountably fond of the victim, Monsieur Coucher, wealthy owner of a health serum company shot dead in the presence of his empty safe. The good-natured Coucher lived life to the full. He had three women in his life – an elegant upper-class wife, a bitter ex-wife, and a charming young mistress. Maigret gets to know them quite well.Simenon believed in writing novels that could be read in a day. The Shadow Puppet is certainly short and concise – not a word wasted – yet so dense with suggestive psychological undercurrents and unsettling atmosphere that it's totally satisfying and feels like it's taking place in real time.I thought I'd read every Maigret novel available in English, but this one was new to me. I loved every minute of it. Although The Shadow a Puppet is an early Maigret, published in France in 1932, it already exhibits the understated wit, psychological nuances and haiku-like descriptions found in Simenon's best mysteries. The translation, I believe, successfully captures Simenon's inimitable style.

Maigret finds himself liking a murdered man that he never met while he looks for his murderer among 28 residents of what an American would call an apartment complex. This Simenon novel has especially strong character portraits of sad and nasty people.

No the best in the series. A bit lazy and characters are confusing and poorly drawn by the master. Place it in the lower third of his panthion.

Like so many of Simenon's novels, this one improves with rereading. So read it, pour a cup of coffee, and read it again.

A work of Simenon's youth. Interesting mainly as a sketch of the world he was to flesh out in later Maigrets.

Big fan of George's Simenon. Inspector maigret is always a great read.

One of my favorites! Maigret is a full-rounded police inspector.

My favorite of the "early" Maigret's that I have read recently. This reader knows much more about the more mature Chief Inspector from having previously read so very many of Simenon's "later" Maigret's. A pleasure for the reader to imagine how much Simenon knew about the mature Maigret at the time he wrote The Shadow Puppet.

I have been watching and reading Maigret for tens of years. Sometimes I "go off" the writing but I usually return to the hardbacks that I bought many years ago at the Hay Festival. Simenon is an "odd" writer and some of his non-Maigret stories are quite macabre but having lived out of the UK for 40 plus years I can see that no matter how fluent a translator you are you can never quite incorporate the sense of culture that comes from growing up with a language. I guess therefore that each translator misses the real essence of the original. I find the early books of particular interest as they relate to 1930s and 40s France and one is transported back to a very different world indeed. I am now slowly transferring my collection of Maigrets to Kindle as they are so much easier in this format to read in bed and they are simple to travel with.I think all Maigret books are an acquired taste as are the TV programmes so a review as such is obviously a very personal thing. I enjoy the majority of my collection and return to them from time to time. I was puzzled by the title of this story though. I do think if you enjoy one that you will enjoy the majority.

Maigret stories are so satisfying. This is a short book with less than 150 pages but Simenon packs a lot into those pages set in the claustrophobic environment of an old Paris apartment block. The very rich and the very poor rub shoulders with each other on the staircase. For the rich it is a staircase that leads to a grand apartment of many rooms with large windows and views of the city. Servants attend to their masters' needs. For the poor it is single cramped and dirty room in which two elderly women live a pinched and miserable existence.The prejudices and class tensions of the key characters are the building blocks of this story of jealousy, theft and murder. Maigret struggles with the complicated set of family relationships of the twice-married Monsieur Couchet and how they have conspired to bring an end to his life. In the end though all is laid bare and it is a sorry tale. It is hard to feel sorrow or sympathy for any of the main protagonists. The young woman with whom the victim was conducting an extra-marital affair is the only one who seems to emerge with any degree of integrity or strength of character.

Simenon is such a master of conjuring up the atmosphere of the time in which the novels are set that the plots and denouement ( ie who did it?) hardly seem to matter . The pleasure is in the realism and fine character drawing. How he kept this up for 70 odd novels ( was it?) without any of them - I have now read 14- seeming at all repetitive I don’t know. Sheer genius. Just savour it is my advice.

The Shadow Puppet reads like a pared back Dickens novel in places. With an enviable economy of style, Simenon sketches out a story of family secrets, murder and obsession with money, all set in a particularly atmospheric part of Paris. Maigret operates pretty much as a lone wolf in this story, moving between the various characters and their locations. This allows Simenon to paint a picture of a city that is both vibrantly alive with bustle of everyday life, and also filled with dark corners and secrets. Impressively done in a book that can be read pretty much at one sitting.

This is a typical Maigret story. The Chief Inspector has not clear idea and allows the case to unfold before him through patient well structured questoning. It is through understanding people rather than forensic clues. As usual the more notorious less cultured characters appear in the best light; Maigret likes the victim for how he treats others and the most scorn is shown to the more previledged classes. However a crime has been committed and the policeman will not rest until the truth is exposed.These books are able to be read in an evening and the stories are always a pleasure to read and reason over the motive and culprit.