I’ve got into the habit of starting our Club Reading Weeks with some Golden Age crime; it’s often the case that there’s an Agatha Christie or one of Simenon’s Maigret titles which came out during the year in question. 1961, however, was a bumper year in which both authors brought out a new work and so I couldn’t resist reading the pair of titles! Interestingly, too, there was a common theme in each which I’ll get onto later; the books are “The Pale Horse” by Agatha Christie and “Maigret and the Idle Burglar” by Simenon, translated by Daphne Woodward.
“Pale…” opens in the kind of setting we’re perhaps not used to seeing in GA crime: a 1960s Chelsea coffee bar. Our narrator for most of the book is one Mark Easterbrook, a historian who’s currently at work on a book on Mogul architecture. His life is a little staid, with his spare time often spent at cultural events with the sophisticated Hermia. However, he will witness an event in the coffee bar, a fight between two modern young women dressed in black, which will change his life.
“Oh Chelsea!” said Mrs. Oliver. “Everything happens there, I believe. Beatniks and sputniks and squares and the beat generation. I don’t write about them much because I’m so afraid of getting the terms wrong. It’s safer, I think, to stick to what you know.”
In another part of London, a dying woman calls for a Priest to make final confession; and the troubled cleric is then murdered on his way home from that meeting. However, left behind, hidden in his shoe, is a piece of paper with a list of names. The investigating police are puzzled as several possible candidates for this list appear to have died recently of natural causes. Oddly, these two strands intersect and lead Easterbrook to encounter a former pub called ‘The Pale Horse’, now occupied by three women, considered locally to be witches… There are hints of the supernatural, rumours that death can be induced by rays sent from one part of the country to another, and the lively Ginger, who Easterbrook meets in the course of the investigation, is put into real peril. Mix in Ariadne Oliver, who flits in and out of the story, and you have a wonderfully entertaining mystery with the spooky hints that Christie does so well!
Meanwhile, over in Paris, Maigret is called out in the middle of the night to the discovery of a murdered man in the Bois de Boulogne. It’s not something he should normally have been involved in, as the Inspector in charge of that area of the city is responsible. Additionally, the police force is dealing with dramatic changes in procedure; but a man at scene thinks something is odd and that Maigret should take a look. The latter is interested, as attempts have been made to make the victim unrecognisable; but he is identified, and Maigret knows him.
The place was being reorganized, as they called it. Well-educated gentlemanly young fellows, scions of the best French families, were sitting in quiet offices, studying the whole the thing in the interests of efficiency. Their learned cogitations were producing impractical plans that found expression in a weekly batch of new regulations. To begin with, the police were now declared to be an instrument at the service of justice. A mere instrument. And an instrument has no brain.
The man was a quiet burglar, known to have committed a number of crimes over the years but not often caught. The higher-ups want to write this off as a gangland quarrel, as there is a bigger investigation going on into organised crime – but Maigret knows this is not what it was. Despite the pressures from his superiors, our detective manages to investigate the burglar’s life – and finds out more about the man than he expected.
Both of these books were thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying reads, but what was interesting to me, encountering them together as I did, was seeing how both authors tackled the changes taking place in the world around them. 1961 was definitely a year when the world was evolving, and Christie’s book shows her moving from the country house setting to a world of young people, coffee bars and changing mores. She wryly allows Ariadne Oliver to acknowledge the changing times in the quote I shared earlier in this post, but I think Christie handles the modern world well here. Easterbrook is a more traditional character, attending theatre shows and the like, and he observes the next generation with a tolerant, interested eye. And it’s telling to see how Christie contrasts Ginger and Hermia, both of whom are potential love interests for Mark; although one might seem to be an obvious match, that’s not necessarily the way things will go!
As for Maigret, you have to feel for the poor man. He’s gone from a world where he could detect in relative peace, working alongside his superiors to catch criminals, to one where red tape is all, the higher ups think they know what to do and can control investigations, and the focus seems to be all on larger, organised crimes. Simenon has his detective fulminating about these changes throughout the novel, and it’s clear that both men do not approve of the current set-up. There’s almost a sense of nostalgia coming from the detective, a feeling of loss, and Maigret definitely misses the old times when his role was clearer and more sensibly defined.
So both of these novels tackle the modern world as well as the effect on crime and the sleuths who investigate it. I loved the Christie, particularly Mrs Oliver’s cameos through the story, and Christie brilliantly builds her into the plot. Intriguingly, there are a couple of places where she uses a phrase or two which I’m sure appeared in other novels – perhaps age telling slightly? The Maigret was also a treat, with the detective digging down using old-school investigations to find out the truth about a killing. Certainly, both books made me reflect about how the times were changing in 1961 and the effects this had all across society. A wonderful way to start out #1961Club and both titles are highly recommended by me!
Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings 