Pietr the Latvian wasn’t the first book that Georges Simenon wrote. He’d managed more than 100 pulp fiction novels before this one under a number of pseudonyms. Strictly speaking, Pietr the Latvian wasn’t even the first Maigret novel to be published. It was the fifth. Originally, Arthème Fayard put the story out in instalments in the magazine Ric et Rac between July and October 1930. By the time it was published in novel form in May 1931, the prolific author had already pumped out four other Maigrets. But those are technicalities. The thing that matters is that this was the first story Simenon thought good enough to bear his own name – and the first to star one of the most enduring characters in 20th-century literature. It heralds the coming of a genius.
Simenon himself was so confident in his creation that he celebrated his arrival with a huge party. More than 1,000 people attended a cabaret in Montparnasse, dressed as gangsters and prostitutes. There were famous writers (including Colette and Francis Carco), painters and politicians. The club was decorated with pictures of corpses and handcuffs. There were film cameras and dozens of journalists – who helped make the evening a publicity coup. Simenon became famous. Soon, the first Maigret films were being made, André Gide was avidly reading the novels and demanding to meet their creator, and Simenon’s income had grown exponentially. Literary history was being made.
Hindsight makes it all seem inevitable. And when you read Pietr the Latvian you can certainly recognise plenty of the character traits that would make Maigret so enduring. He is big, strong, heavy, a “rock” on which “all would shatter”. He is endearingly keen for the stove in his office to be as hot as possible, pitifully aware of its absence when he is out and about. He is as concerned with the tobacco in his pipe as with the blood he sees everywhere. He is equally happy to tuck both into fine food and the sandwiches from Brasserie Dauphine that are brought round to police headquarters when he is busy on a job. His relationship with alcohol hovers between comforting and troubling.
Most of all, the Maigret in Pietr the Latvian is a fascinatingly complicated and contradictory man. He has a gruff, straightforward, tough-cop exterior, but inside he is downbeat and empathetic. He doesn’t hate the criminal he is chasing – even after his partner is shot. Instead, we are told: “It would be an exaggeration to say that in most criminal inquiries cordial relations arise between the police and the person they are trying to corner into confession. All the same, they almost always become close to some degree (unless the suspect is just a glowering brute). That must be because for weeks and sometimes months on end the police and the suspect do nothing but think about each other.”
It all feels pleasingly familiar from the other Maigret novels I’ve enjoyed. But I have to admit to some ambiguity of feeling. I’m not certain what I’d make of Pietr the Latvian if it were the only Simenon novel I’d read. I’m even less sure that if I’d read this book in isolation, I’d have been able to recognise it as a literary landmark.
Certainly, you can make a case against it. As Julian Barnes has said, the plot is “anxiously complicated”, featuring a pair of twins who take on double and triple identities, a confusing cast of paper-thin stereotypes, a lot of dashing about but no real sense of purpose. The new translation I read, by David Bellos, is wonderfully clear and readable – but does also demonstrate a few flaws in the writing. There are a lot of overexcited exclamation marks! Surprisingly, given Simenon’s later economy, the prose contains many redundant adjectives and adverbs. There’s a deeper shock in a few unpleasantly creepy passages featuring antisemitism and foreigner bashing.
But Pietr the Latvian also made my skin crawl for better reasons. It’s bracingly grim. Not so much noir as grey: everything rain-soaked, shoddy and sleazy. Simenon’s remarkable ability to conjure atmosphere and unease is already on show. There are some fine descriptions of the dark slums a few short steps from the bright lights of the Rue de Rivoli, the laundry boats on the Seine, the filthy bars and dangerous dockside in Fécamp. And although the story sometimes felt absurd and confusing, it was nonetheless compelling. The downbeat conclusion is especially haunting, and just right for Maigret’s general air of frustration and unhappiness. He isn’t like most of his golden-age contemporaries. Crime isn’t a charming hobby for him. It’s a horrible business. And Pietr the Latvian gets him off to a suitably nasty start.
Next time, after an enjoyably enthusiastic and confusing vote, putting dozens of Simenon’s books into contention, we’re going to read one of his non-Maigret novels, The Snow Was Dirty. (We might even have time to fit in another Maigret before the end of the month – so look out for that, too …)
