The Madman of Bergerac by Georges Simenon (No 15)
Translated by Ros Schwartz
Inspector Maigret is embarking on a holiday, going to the Dordogne to see an old friend and colleague, with a small job to do in Bordeaux on the side, while Madame Maigret is visiting her sister in Alsace. In his sleeper compartment, the man in the upper bunk is restless, upset, and neither are getting much sleep. Indeed his fretting companion leaves the carriage, Maigret shortly follows, only to see the man leap from the train as it goes around a slow bend – impulsively for Maigret he follows him leaping too – and ending up shot! Luckily he is rescued and treated, and discharged to recuperate in the nearby hotel in the small town of Bergerac; Madame Maigret is soon on her way to look after him, and his colleague whom he was visiting comes to visit.
However, Maigret has landed himself in a hotbed of small town politics, and a series of local murders by the ‘Madman’. Is there a connection between them and the man who jumped off the train? There’s certainly plenty of scandal brewing underneath the surface, and Maigret directs things from his bed, winding up the local bigwigs to uncover their skeletons.
To be honest, I didn’t enjoy this Maigret as much as many others. I was perplexed why he’d put himself in danger like that jumping from the train, getting shot, then solving the mystery from his hotel bed. There are successful novels where a detective solves a crime from their bed – Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time for instance, but despite the soothing presence of Madame Maigret, this novella had a rather confusing plot, and was, after the train, static.
Penguin paperback, 145 pages. BUY at Blackwell’s or Amazon UK via my affiliate links (Amazon link will work even if crossed through!)
Point Blank aka The Hunter by Richard Stark
Just to get things straight, the Patrick Swayze film you may be thinking of is Point Break, a completely different story. Point Blank is the retitled first novel in the Parker series by Donald E Westlake, writing as Richard Stark, published in 1962. It has been the basis of two films, the 1967 Point Blank starring Lee Marvin, and Payback (1999) starring Mel Gibson. I don’t think I’ve seen the former, but I’m sure I enjoyed the latter.
As the novel opens we meet Parker shambling across the George Washington Bridge into NYC. As series of small cons later, he’s amassed enough money to get a new suit and a new identity by theft. First stop is his Lynn’s apartment, to see if she knows where Mal is, and if she’s likely to betray him further. After her surprise that he’s alive…
She said, “I’m glad you aren’t dead. Isn’t that stupid?”
“Yes.”
She nodded. “You hate me. You got a right.”
“I ought to slash you,” he told her. “I ought to slash your nostrils. I ought to make you look like a witch, like the witch you are.”
“You ought to kill me,” she said hopelessly.
“Maybe I will.”
Her head sagged down toward her chest. Her voice was almost inaudible. “I keep taking pills,” she murmured. “Every night. If I don’t take the pills, I don’t sleep. I think about you.”
“And how I’m coming for you?”
“No, and how you’re dead. And I wish it was me.”
“Take too many pills,” he suggested.
“I can’t. I’m a coward.” She raised her head and looked at him again. “That’s why I did it, Parker,” she said. “I’m a coward. It was you dead or me dead.”
When he returns, she’s dead, driven to take the whole bottle of pills. In a throwaway line, he reads his wife’s name on the bottle. Blimey! What kind of man is he? Where Lynn’s concerned, he’s a lover and a hater.
He’s a career criminal, newly escaped from jail, where he was serving six months being picked up as a ‘vag’, a vagrant, after being left for dead when his so-called partner in crime, Mal, shot him and ran with all $83K from the heist and Lynn. Parker is out for revenge to get his share of the money, enough to maintain his usual standard of living for a good while.
But Mal has spent the money, repaying the large sum that he lost for the “Outfit” in a drugs deal gone wrong. But he has wangled himself into the NYC branch of the Outfit, on probation. Once he hears that Parker is looking for him, he’ll seek protection from his bosses, who’ll leave him to fend for himself!
So begins a cat and mouse chase between Parker and Mal, graduating to Parker vs. the Outfit. All who get in the way are likely to end up dead. Alongside Parker’s revenge mission, we get the full story of the heist. Parker is meticulous in planning the con, which goes beyond his usual style and it’s going down well, until the point of betrayal.
Parker is big, strong, taciturn but persuasive, good with his hands, and a gun. He’s ruthless, but lives to his own code of ethics which is very much of an eye for an eye style, applying equally to men and women. Westlake would go on to write 23 more novels featuring Parker, all using the Stark pseudonym. His writing as Stark is exactly that, dark, intense, brooding, the little humour in it throwaway rather than overt. Although Parker isn’t exactly likeable, you do warm to him, in the same way that you warm to Tony Soprano, except they’re on opposite sides of course! Lee Marvin seems to be perfect casting in the original movie, and I’d like to see that. Sadly the books are mostly out of print, but I shall certainly look out for more, for this was a great thriller.
Source: Own copy. Allison & Busby paperback, 154 pages. BUY used at Amazon UK via my affiliate link (which will work even if crossed through)
