The narrative unfolds like a photograph slowly developing; it emerges from the official language and turns into a story of obsession, hate, dual identity, murder and suicide, and then switches back to the official language for the denouement.
--John Lancaster on Pietr the Latvian, "Maigret's Room," The London Review of Books June 4 2020.
Rivulets of rain water flowed from Maigret's overcoat, trousers and shoes into little puddles on the floor. In that state he could not have sat down on the light-green velvet of the armchair in the lounge.
--George Simenon, Pietr the Latvian, translated by David Bellos (1930, Penguin)
Pietr the Latvian is Simenon's first novel about police detective Maigret, one of ten novels he published in 1930. It establishes a sort of pattern that Simenon followed for the subsequent 74 Maigret novels: only showing us what Maigret does to solve a case and little of what he thinks or what anyone else is doing except for their encounters with the detective. There is somewhat more violence than most of the later Maigret novels -- Maigret is shot and almost drowns without it slowing him down much -- as he struggles to get sufficient evidence to bring an international criminal and his cohorts to justice. The Latvian commits suicide in front of Maigret before he can be put in handcuffs and the novel ends with Madame Maigret serving her husband her homemade plum liqueur. There is little that is romantic about Maigret's job as he stakes out houses and travels grimly throughout France in search of clues.
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