Jon Nixon reviewed Pietr the Latvian by Georges Simenon
The Strange Case of Peter the Lett (French: Pietr-le-Letton) is a 1931 detective novel by …
Review of 'Pietr the Latvian' on 'Storygraph'
4 stars
The first Maigret novel by Georges Simenon.
This one didn’t quite work for me but was a short, easy read with some nice noir elements so I still enjoyed it and would read more to see if the writing got more consistent later in the series (I understand there are dozens of them).
The text is a bit gushy (peppered with exclamation marks) and the climax is marred by a big info dump. Maigret is a detective whose greatest skill seems to psyching out the bad guys by making his presence as obvious as possible. He shrugs off a bullet wound, preferring a towel, some booze and some morphine to a hospital trip.
There are a couple of paragraphs about Maigret’s home life but you really don’t learn much about him except that he is unflappable, has a grudging respect for the bad guys, and is good at hiding in alleyways and looking moody.
The antagonist is an interesting, dark, flawed, complicated character and the scenes he shares with Margret (knocking back pints of rum and absinthe) are great fun.
This one didn’t quite work for me but was a short, easy read with some nice noir elements so I still enjoyed it and would read more to see if the writing got more consistent later in the series (I understand there are dozens of them).
The text is a bit gushy (peppered with exclamation marks) and the climax is marred by a big info dump. Maigret is a detective whose greatest skill seems to psyching out the bad guys by making his presence as obvious as possible. He shrugs off a bullet wound, preferring a towel, some booze and some morphine to a hospital trip.
There are a couple of paragraphs about Maigret’s home life but you really don’t learn much about him except that he is unflappable, has a grudging respect for the bad guys, and is good at hiding in alleyways and looking moody.
The antagonist is an interesting, dark, flawed, complicated character and the scenes he shares with Margret (knocking back pints of rum and absinthe) are great fun.