Good little pocket-sized Inspector Maigret mystery to read on the train. As good as any of the other Maigret mysteries.

This was well plotted, and whilst Maigret was his normal gloomy, introverted self, there was something spirited and committed about his determination that lifted this outing slightly. Set around the river Seine and the docks area, the sense of place was really strong as well.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/mans-head-georges-simenon

How an author as prolific as Simenon could maintain such high standards is beyond me, this early entry in the Maigret series was book 5 of 11(!) published in the series in 1931 and they range from good to very good.

"I was born in the dark and in the rain but I got away. The crimes I write about are the crimes I would have committed if I had not got away." - Georges Simenon

This particular entry is notable for featuring a psychological showdown between the hero cop and the killer who is baiting him, a leap of faith based on Maigret's intuition as a condemned man is elaborately helped to escape in the opening chapter and the angry world view of a poor but intelligent man causing pain and misery to those around him.

As always there is a fair amount of detecting done whilst refilling a pipe and enjoying a local cafe but this is no cosy mystery, it's a dark tale of life and death, of blackmail and murder, of a game of cat and mouse between detective and genius. Instead of the usual approach towards crime solving, this time Maigret knows who the killer is already and instead must find proof to back up his intuition. A giant leap in terms of the detective novel in 1931 that today is quite common place that combines with several elements of what would come to be known as hard-boiled and noir fiction to form an exciting change in direction for the crime novel.

BBC Radio 7

My 5. Maigret novel and I’m stunned, not only of the man’s productivity (he wrote 10 novels in 1931), but also of the quality and diversity of the stories.

In this novel Maigret lets a convicted murder escape from prison in the hope he’ll lead the police to the real murder, as Maigret is convinced he’s innocent, once we as a reader accepts this unlikely setup, the story unfolds as a cat-and-mouse game between Maigret and a very strange adversary.

The centre of the story is Maigrets frustration over the abundance of leads pointing in all directions and his rocksteady patience once he’s on the track to solve
the case.

Maigret Saves a Condemned Man
Review of the Penguin Classics paperback (2014) of a new translation* by [a:David Coward|7586|David Coward|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] from the French language original [b:La Tête d'un homme|191135|La Tête d'un homme|Georges Simenon|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1565624932l/191135._SY75_.jpg|552197] (1931)

A Man's Head starts off with yet another unorthodox opening for a Simenon novel. Chief Inspector Maigret has engineered a prison escape for a condemned man on the eve of his execution by guillotine. Maigret believes the man to be innocent even though all evidence in the case pointed against him and Maigret himself had to arrest him. The purpose of the escape is to observe the suspect from a distance and to see if his movements lead back to the actual culprit.


Title card for the 1967 French TV adapation of "A Man's Head". Image sourced from IMDb.

The case becomes further complicated when an anonymous source reveals the escape plan to the press. Maigret's suspicions come to centre on the patrons of a particular bar where he meets a vagrant Czech student and the American relatives of the original murder victim. Then the escapee shows up outside the same bar for further intrigue. Eventually the mystery is miraculously solved yet again by the cantankerous Chief Inspector.

I've now read several of the early Maigret novellas in the past three weeks and they continue to impress with how different they are not only from each other, but also from other "Golden Age of Crime" novels of that interwar era. What is even more impressive is that the first dozen were all published in 1931 as if he wrote one every month. Perhaps it is not that surprising from an author who wrote over 500 books in his lifetime, but it still an eyeopener.

Continuing the confusion for completists, this is Maigret #9 in the Penguin Classics series of new translations (2013-2019) of the Inspector Maigret novels and short stories, but is listed as Maigret #5 in the previous standard Maigret Series Listopia as listed on Goodreads.

Trivia and Links
* Some English translations have given the title as Maigret's War of Nerves.

A Man's Head, under its original French title La Tête d'un homme, was adapted for a French language film in 1933 directed by Julien Duvivier with Harry Baur as Inspector Maigret and for French television in 1967, as Episode 2 of the long running TV series Les enquêtes du commissaire Maigret (The Investigations of Commissioner Maigret) (1967-1990) with Jean Richard as Inspector Maigret.

There is an article about the Penguin Classics re-translations of the Inspector Maigret novels at Maigret, the Enduring Appeal of the Parisian Sleuth by Paddy Kehoe, RTE, August 17, 2019.

Maigret orchestrates the escape of a man on death row because he either believes the man didn't commit the crime or was a pawn in it. Turns out he was spot on and comes up with a criminal who likes to be puppeteer.

Like Poirot without a sidekick. to help explain what is going on while it is going on. Instead Maigret explains all to his superiors at the end.