Up until about ten o'clock on Monday Louise Filon had been at home alone. She had eaten tinned lobster and drunk a little wine. Apparently she had then gone to bed, since the bed had been found unmade; not untidy, as if she had slept with a man, but simply unmade.
--Georges Simenon, Maigret's Mistake (Maigret se trompe, Penguin, 1953, translated by Howard Curtis)
After reading Patrick Marham's biography of Simenon it is hard to resist the influence of Simenon's own life on this marvelous story of the killing of a former prostitute who became the mistress of a renowned brain surgeon. The contrast between the murdered Louise Filon and the arrogant surgeon Professor Gouin is extensively explored by Simenon, always interested in class conflict; Professor Gouin has many female admirers while Louis Filon's boyfriend is a struggling musician. Most of the novel is Maigret observing and talking to various possible suspects, as he tries to understand Professor Gouin's attraction to women of lower class and their attraction to him. The novel is fascinating for its exploration of the conflicts and differences between the classes.
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