It had been a couple months since I had read one of Georges Simenon's Maigret books so I decided it was time to go back to them. More than that, I decided I should read the first one. The copy I read was called Pietr the Latvian but it has also been published as The Strange Case of Peter the Lett and Maigret and the Enigmatic Lett, and each one was by a different translator.
I think, when it comes to serial characters (characters who are the protagonists of several individual stories, as opposed to one distinct story. Superman compared to Frodo Baggins, for example (yes, I’m stealing the term from Robin Laws) ), I don't think it's necessary or even wise to start with the first work. Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries are a series I routinely go back to but I don't know if I had started with Fer De Lance if it would have sold me on the books.
Pietr the Latvian isn't as extreme a case but I am glad that I started with one of the later books, Maigret’s Dead Man. At that point, Simenon had clearly gotten a very defined idea of who Jules Maigret was and how he operated. To be sure, Maigret is still very realized in Petr the Latvian. This isn't an case of you can see the seeds of the character to come. It's the sapling of the character to come.
I did have much more of a sense of Maigret's physical presence in this first book, as opposed to his emotional, intellectual presence. In the later books, I was never struck by the fact that Maigret is big slab of a human being while this first outing never lets me forget that. I have read some folks compare Maigret to Hercule Poirot, which I think is a stretch, but it's an even farther stretch at their starts.
That being said, many of the elements that got me hooked on Maigret are already in place. The descriptions of places and people are very grounded and realistic. More than that, there is a strong psychological element to both the book and Maigret's methods. While Maigret is willing to use footprints and cigarette ashes to figure things out, he is much more about getting into the head of a suspect right out of the gate.
Pietr the Latvian has more of a noir vibe that the other two Maigret books that I have read. Maigret gets shot around the middle of the book and just powers through that in order to continue the investigation for crying out loud. That feels more like something Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett would write. (I'd have to go back and look but I'm sure Hammett's Continental Op has done that more than once) To be fair, the book was written when both those guys were active.
And the title character who is also the central antagonist is more of a larger-than-life bad guy compared to my previous reads. Not a super villain (and, yes, there’s a big twist to his nature) but not a realistically grounded character.
To be fair, Simenon wrote seventy-five books in the series, along with over a dozen short stories. I have read far too small a sampling to speak authoritatively about what Maigret and his stories are really like. However, despite what I think is some early installment weirdness, Pietr the Latvian just wants me to keep on reading.
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