In my review of Maigret’s Madwoman I mentioned Simenon’s habit of introducing little “fillips for fans”: recollections of earlier books in the series that are then slightly adjusted. Typically a name is changed. Maigret’s Informer might be another example of this, as the informer in the title is a little guy known as the Flea and I had to wonder if he was the same character as appeared in Maigret at Picratt’s as the Grasshopper. I think he is. The same, but different.

The Maigret novels where the detective chief inspector takes on gangsters are, I think, the worst in the series. Because Simenon doesn’t write action scenes well and because gangsters aren’t very interesting psychological cases to begin with. Why do they kill people? Because they’re in the way or it’s just business.

Maigret’s Informer is a gangster novel with a very dull murder at its heart. The old boss has a young wife who is screwing around on him, and she and her younger lover (a new boss) conspire to kill him. They actually stand a good chance of getting away with it too, but the informer trips them up and after being arrested they abruptly fall out in an ending that plays like a weak rehash of the end of Maigret and the Saturday Caller.

I didn’t find this one worth bothering with at all. The funereal Inspector Louis was a bit interesting, but that was it. Otherwise it was just the usual dull round of Maigret going about interviewing those indispensable Paris concierges before heading to the bar, or going home so that Madame Maigret can take care of him. She even packs his luggage for him when he has to head down south. Ah, they don’t make helpmeets like that anymore.

Maigret index