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It was inevitable that I would finally break down and uy one of the Penguin ebooks of the truly gifted writer Georges Simenon who created one of the 20th century's most memorable detective characters, Maigret. One of Simenon's first Maigret tales is Lock 14 and is reissued in a translation by Robert Baldick. (The French title, "Le Charretier de la 'Providence'" is arguably a better title as it refers to the barge workers central to the story; but it has also been issued in English as "The Crime at Lock 14", "Maigret Meets a Milord" and "The Triumph of Inspector Maigret", each title becoming less and less relevent. But I, too, digress.)
Simenon's stark prose, and dark settings many of us never encounter -- in this case the barge workers along the Marne river in France around 1930 before modern shipping replaced them -- is wonderfully bleak. I think it's raining almost the entire story, with mud everywhere. In the opening pages, a women, otherwise tastefully dressed and ready for cocktails, is found half buried in a stable under some hay; two barge workers, into their cups before retiring, slept beside her all night without discovering the corpse. As Maigret attempts to unravel the mystery, barges -- including perhaps a murderer -- are passing the scene daily as they progress through the lock system of the river.
It's not a long read but it is compelling and every page digs us deeper into this rough and shabby world dangerously balanced on the edge of disaster that could strike at a moment's notice. It isn't until a second body turns up that Maigret begins to turn the clues into a vision of what might have happened and how events long past have come to haunt the present. Highly recommended.
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