Mystery Review: Maigret and the Old People contains the story of an intense life-long platonic but requited love affair, reminding the reader just a bit of García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). Maigret finds himself baffled and out of his depth in the rarefied air of the sheltered and discrete world of aristocrats, counts and princesses. For Maigret the realm of the monied, upper classes is a foreign land. The title refers to old people, and perhaps it has some of the meaning of the old order as the characters seem of a bygone and outdated time, too effete to live. Although France seems democratic from afar (Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, after all) apparently the aristocracy still matters, or did in 1960. Maigret and the Old People is the first Maigret mystery that made me warm up to the great detective, revealing him as more of a person. Simenon makes you come to Maigret, unlike the more dynamic Poirot or Holmes. Maigret is stolid, reserved, phlegmatic, he doesn't play up to the reader. He's a cat not a dog, though he really seems like an old bear. The reader may readily figure out half the solution of the murder, as it seems to be the only answer, but the other half is a little trickier. Perhaps I should say, the reader may quickly figure out the "who," but not quite solve the "why," though it's simple if not obvious. I can be vaguer. Maigret and the Old People is number 56 in the series, also known as Maigret in Society. [4★]
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