I really enjoyed the start of this story because it showed me Maigret living very much outside his comfort zone, letting me see the man when he isn’t manically focused on solving a case and has to find a way to try and be a normal human being. Frankly, that’s something he’s not very good at and his discomfiture made me smile, not just in a spirit of schadenfreude but because Maigret’s coping mechanisms are described with dry humour and great accuracy.

Maigret and his wife are holidaying in Les Sables-d’Olonne, a seaside town on the Atlantic coast, when Madame Maigret is taken into hospital, leaving Maigret with no obligations or itinerary other than a daily visit to his wife’s bedside. This visit is a source of great discomfiture to Maigret, partly because the daily obligation chafes on him but mostly because the hospital is attached to a convent and is run by nuns whose quiet competence and complete control of their environment makes him feel like a schoolboy being guided or admonished by adult authority figures so that he almost feels mocked by their softly spoken civilities. His visits have become a ritual not of his choosing. Every day he phones at 11.00 to confirm that he can visit, for thirty minutes, at 15.00. Every visit occurs as it was the first and is carried out with an unvarying routine that seems more like a ritual observance than a procedure. The setting, the odd mix of innocence, solicitude and serene authority knock Maigret so far off balance that he barely recognises himself. His discomfort is so obvious to his wife that she takes pity on him and tells him, “You can go now.” when the thirty minutes of the visit have passed. 

The second thing that made me smile was seeing Maigret dealing with having complete freedom on how he spends twenty-three-and-a-half hours each day by establishing a rigid routine which mostly involves walking, according to an unvarying timetable from hotel, to bar, to café, to restaurant and back to the hotel. taking a glass of white wine or an aperitif at each stop.

Maigret is rescued from his self-imposed Purgatory of enforced idleness when someone at the hospital leaves a note in his jacket pocket saying: “For pity’s sake, ask to see the patient in room 15.” Maigrer initially ignores the request, focussing more on how it was slipped into his jacket than on what it might mean. By the time decides to act on the request, the young woman in room fifteen has died. Maigret’s guilt at having delayed responding to the request and his need to do something that reaffirms his identity pushes him into an informal investigation that sets him on the path of a killer who Maigret is certain will strike again soon,

From that point onwards, Maigret slides into obsession and becomes his usual brusquely brooding, uncommunicative self, thinking of nothing but the solution to the mystery in front of him and interested in the people around him only in so far as they can be instrumental in him solving the case.

Maigret’s unofficial status, which he holds on to even when offered the opportunity to lead the investigation, means that he must adopt slightly different tactics for tracking down his prey. He has to do more of the legwork himself and he feels the need to get face to face with potential suspects. Maigret’s lack of official status is aggravated by his encounter with an upper-class Investigating Magistrate who regards Maigret with amused interest that turns to outrage when he thinks Maigret is getting above himself.

The mystery itself is not particularly complicated. It becomes obvious who the killer is fairly early on although exactly what the killer has done and how they did it remain obscured for most of the book. Maigret’s challenge is to find proof of what has been done and confront the killer with it.

The last third of the book is a duel of wills and wits between Maigret and the killer. As I watched them circle each other, I was struck by how similar they were. Maigret is all insight and no empathy. He is completely focused on his goal. He has no regard for how others view him and is unconcerned with their needs and wants. In these things, he and the killer are alike. Where they differ is that Maigret is driven by a need for justice, or at least his own brand of it.

I felt that the final exposition, a set piece between Maigret and the killer, went on for a little too long. The need to explain how clever the killer and Maigret had been started to erode the drama of the denouement. I wanted to shout at them to get on with it already.

Even so, I had a lot of fun with this book and it’s made me hungry for some more Maigret soon.