The Madman of Bergerac aka Le Fou de Bergerac by Georges Simenon Nine out of 10
The Madman of Bergerac aka Le Fou de Bergerac by Georges Simenon
Nine out of 10
The Madman of Bergerac is a captivating, intelligent, short, wonderful detective story written by one of the best authors of the genre, Georges Simenon, who has more than three works included on The Guardian 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read:
Inspector Maigret is the hero of the crime stories written by the great Georges Simenon and in this book, he travels to the countryside, by train, in order to spend time with his friend, former commisaire Leduc, who has invited him to fish with him and enjoy a well-deserved holyday.
When two people come to the compartment where the inspector has a place, he moves to a second-class area, where he shares the space with a man who sleeps in the bunk on top, where he keeps moving, making noises and overall behaving as a tormented man- something we would understand later.
When the commisaire finally complains about the constant agitation, the stranger comes down from his bunk, without his neighbor seeing his face, then goes out and jumping off the slow moving train, followed by Maigret, who does not know why he does it, but abandons his luggage on a hunch.
As soon as he is on the ground, the inspector sees the unknown man who shoots at him and wounds him rather badly in the arm, enough to make him bleed seriously and realize that without help, he might die soon, even if he tries hard to stumble and walk to a nearby farm, where he is fortunately saved by a farmer.
He wakes up later in the local hospital, where he meets the local notabilities, first doctor Rivaud, then those in charge with investigations, the local commisaire and prosecutor Duhourceau, all of whom are concerned about the identity of this stranger who has been shot near the railway tracks, right before the station of Bergerac.
An inquiry into two murders and an incident during which a woman has been attacked, but managed to defend herself and chase the aggressor is under way, concluding that the perpetrator is The Madman of Bergerac, the one who has probably shot the patient in the hospital.
The locals soon find who the inspector is, they tell him about the two women who have been attacked near the forest, killed and then pierced with a long needle into their hearts, the killer demonstrating thus that he has a higher education – Maigret starts suspecting the doctor, prosecutor and eventually, even his friend, Leduc.
When he can make the move, the inspector establishes his headquarters at the hotel d’Angleterre, located on the main square of the small town, from where the famous detective would conduct an investigation, in spite of fierce opposition from the local authorities and the fact that he has to lie in bed, unable to move.
Madame Maigret is called to care for the patient and she has the interesting, somewhat amusing role of doing the footwork for the man that is “the head of the household” as they put it in a statement specific for that age, when men kept women in the house, discriminated against largely.
After repeated moments of tension, the inspector has his former colleague Leduc working for him, albeit he had made it clear in the first stages that the ex-detective was one of the suspects, given that the serial killer showed knowledge of medicine and might be a doctor or a man of the law.
Using the same logic, doctor Rivaud becomes one of the men that get the attention of the commisaire, who finds details about the outré arrangements in the family of the physician, married and living in the house with his sister-in-law, a beautiful, sophisticated woman that the talk in town has it that she is his lover.
When Madame Rivaud is invited to the room of the inspector, without his knowledge, she presents herself as haunted, scared, and much less attractive than her sister, with psychological issues.
Her husband is enraged to find about the visit and the other notabilities are upset as well when the comissaire announced a reward for any significant information and is involved in what they see as their domain and none of his business.
Indeed, those who conduct the official investigation feel exhilarated, revenged when they find in the woods a man that had been dead for many days – apparently, he has died on the day of the confrontation with Maigret – and they are sure that the monster has come to end of the rope and has decided to kill himself.
Nevertheless, the comissaire from Paris would not give up; he finds through his wife that there is no doctor diploma issued at any of the specific universities for a man called Rivaud, who has been stationed in Algiers, where he has met his would be wife and her family.
A telegram from Algeria further complicates the situation for the alleged doctor, stating that no doctor with that name worked at the hospital where he is supposed to have been a resident for years and where a man called Samuel Meyer has died in a fire at the hospital where no Rivaud had worked.
This Samuel Meyer has been identified as the monster in the woods aka Le Fou de Bergerac, a rare case, miraculous actually, where someone has died twice, once in Algiers and the second time in the small town of Bergerac.
For spoiler alert reasons, no more would be mentioned of the way the case unfolds, suffice it to say the novel is well written, gripping, like other works by Georges Simenon, including Pietr Le Letton, reviewed here:
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