Maigret and the Loner 1971 detective book
Maigret and the Loner (1971, Belgium)
Original title: Maigret et l’homme tout seul
Inspector Maigret gets a call from one of the precincts near Montmartre, where in an old residential building that will be soon demolished, a dead body was discovered. Maigret arrives to the scene to learn the details, and he has to admit the circumstances are unusual - the man was shot three times in the chest, but it seems he was a homeless person, who lives in that empty building for a while. There are no more clues at the scene, no murder weapon, no way to identify the victim either. The investigation starts slow, but the first details the police managed to discover make the mystery even more elusive. The shot man used to be a carpenter in Paris, he had a wife and a young daughter, but one day, about 20 years ago, he simply vanished without any warning. The widow is unwilling to provide any details from the past, she still is angry at the husband that abandoned her with the child, the daughter was too young to know the details of his life. Maigret is frustrated by the lack of data to work on, but still sends his men to search for anything that would push the investigation forward. It looks like the victim, Marcel Vivien, kept himself to himself and even other homeless people, who met him before, know very little about him.
Inspector Maigret novel based on the winning formula for Georges Simenon, an unnamed victim, very little evidence or leads to follow, not to mention the case began about 20 years earlier and some of the witnesses that could help, are already dead. But unlike with many previous novels, Maigret and the Loner is a bit odd at some points - the evidence seems to pop up without any explanation, he follows the leads without anything else but instinct to rely on, he overlooks obvious directions. Nevertheless, it is a decent Maigret novel, not one of the best, but on the other hand, good enough to keep the reader guessing until the end.
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