Despite being one of the earlier Maigret novels, The Shadow Puppet was one of the last I read in the series of new English translations published by Penguin. Because of this, and because it was written during the years when Simenon was near the top of his game, I thought it might be fun to stand back and take a wider view at how well it fits into the rest of the Maigret canon.

Of course Maigret never changes. He’s the same rock as always, with no crime-solving “method,” no matter what others may say. Instead, he proceeds by an almost unconscious, sponge-like absorption of facts and personal observations, not allowing himself to have any opinions in advance. Indeed, he even denies having any thoughts on a case at all until he begins to grow heavy with a picture of what’s going on and the solution just develops on its own like a photo in a chemical bath. He’s the sort of man Keats would have described as being possessed of Negative Capability, comfortable with uncertainty and doubt. And that’s a remarkable quality in a detective, who we usually think of as bloodhounds. But the thing is, keeping an open-mind is a huge intellectual advantage in pretty much any walk of life, and I think this is a point Simenon wanted to emphasize.

As for the investigation here, I thought I’d quote from something I said in my review of Maigret and the Tall Woman:

Something about wicked women seems to have got Simenon’s creative juices flowing. Looking back on the books I’ve read in the series, it’s the bad girls who stand out the most. Madame Le Cloagulen in Signed, Picpus was probably the worst, but Madame Serre gives her a run for the money here. Related to this fascination with such women is an instinctive loathing of men who are excessively mothered.  The Flemish House and My Friend Maigret are the best examples. I wonder if there was some psychological projection going on here, as Maigret himself is waited on hand and foot by his wife.

This is The Shadow Puppet all the way. In the first place there’s the villain of the piece, who is a total psycho bitch from hell. Or, to use the language of today’s pop psychology, an extremely toxic individual. One of those people who just ruin the lives of everyone they come in contact with, mainly out of their own sense of frustrated ambition. And as for the mothered baby-men, they’re here too. Tragic cases, and Maigret does feel sorry for them, but it’s hard not to miss the contempt he holds them in as well. A real manly man, like the burly detective chief inspector, spends long hours at work and comes home to a set table and a fresh-cooked meal from his loyal wife, who doesn’t talk too much. That’s the ideal marriage.

I think it’s that old-fashioned sort of masculine identity that makes Maigret so sympathetic to the murdered man here. “Good old Couchet!” he finds himself repeating. What makes Couchet such a jolly (or actually not so jolly) good fellow? That he loves lots of women. He’s on his second wife but he’s taken lovers and has a regular mistress on the side. But it’s OK because he runs his own company and he’s rich and he lives in Paris so what do you expect?

Finally, as with most of the Maigret novels there’s little mystery for the reader to figure out. You just have to wait, along with Maigret, until the situation resolves itself. And in this case in particular it’s pretty clear who the bad guys are from the start, since they’re the ones who put Maigret’s back up. Meanwhile, the murder is itself almost incidental and what Simenon really wants to expose us to: the “syrupy greyness” of the moral squalor of the bourgeoisie. The lives of the Martins is full of “day-to-day unpleasantness, which was more repulsive than the murder itself.” The point being that murder only marks the end point in lives and relationships that are already rotten to the core.

Maigret index