Hard-Boiled Mysteries : Book References 2

REFERENCE BOOKS

GEORGES SIMENON - master of grayish...

The Maigret series by George Simenon obviously does not belong to the hard-boiled type of mystery literature, but neither does it belong to Noir. Far from it. Maybe gray, or better, grayish...

But, on the other hand, how many aficionados know the other side of the voluminous corpus of works by Simenon, with its more literary novels that are often dark and desperate, some of these really belonging to Noir.
You will find these great novels among the works that Simenon himself coined romans durs (“tough novels”), which were about the search for the homme nu (the naked man - mankind without any artifice). It’s there that you will also find masterworks like The Stain on the Snow or The Blue Room, which deserve to be included in any literary study on Noir in novels.

For those not very familiar with the diversity of Georges Simenon’s production, we recommend starting with the small essay reviewed here, a true Swiss Army pocketknife that will open your way to this great Belgian novelist.

THE POCKET ESSENTIAL
GEORGES SIMENON
By David Carter

Pocket Essentials–UK, 2003
(distributed in the USA by Trafalgar Square Publishing, North Pomfret, Vermont)

Published in 2003, during the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Belgian author Georges Simenon, this little book will give the English-speaking public the opportunity to discover, or re-discover, the rich corpus of one of Europe’s greater novelists.

This very short essay (96 pages) is a basic introduction to Simenon and his prolific works, synthetic introduction being the usual goal of The Pocket Essential series published in the UK.
For those who do not know much about Simenon, it can be the first step towards a better understanding of his works, which are not confined to crime novels or to the Maigret series, as too many tend to believe.

After a short but serviceable biography, David Carter explores the huge corpus of Simenon’s novels: the Maigret series (79 books translated into English, including short stories) and the more literary production that Simenon himself named romans durs (“tough novels”—103 books translated into English from about 120 novels written in French). In each of the two sections, there is a checklist that gives details for each book, such as the original title, year of publication, and some information about its U.K. and U.S. publication, as well as a short note about the plot and a comment. There is also a relative evaluation of the general quality of each of the works, assigned a score (maximum of 5).
An interesting chapter is about the numerous film adaptations based on his novels, giving a rather complete list of these films, with details, as Simenon is the modern writer who probably inspired the greatest number of films.
In my opinion, the short chapter about adaptation for radio and television could have benefited from the inclusion of a brief list of foreign adaptations, as some of these adaptations are truly memorable, such as the long-running French series (still programmed today) with Bruno Cremer as Commissaire Maigret. (If this series has not yet been adapted for English television, then something is wrong with the UK producers ).

Obviously useful for the novice, The Pocket Essential Georges Simenon is also of interest to the reader who is already well acquainted with Simenon’s diversity, mainly for its two checklists of novels and films, and their comments, that very conveniently re-situate each novel within Simenon’s vast repertoire.

E.Borgers