The end of the beginning

This morning, I have finished the first pass of the last Maigret story, 'Maigret et Monsieur Charles', otherwise No.103 or CHA.

A sordid tale of a rich man with a taste for the low life, who marries the wrong girl - and ends up, fifteen years later, with his head smashed in by her toy boy. Who also ends up dead, shot at point blank range by the wrong girl. A tale of a Maigret towards the end of his career, by a Simenon towards, or perhaps even at the end of his, and containing a fair bit of what I take to be autobiographical material. Written in 1972, just as I was entering the world of work and long before I took any interest. With my not starting on Simenon until I retired, or thereabouts, something more than ten years ago.

And now for the serious work of cross checking my version of events against the Trussel version.

Reference 1: http://www.trussel.com/maig/maig.htm.

Reference 2: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/07/dundee-cake.html. Notice, inter alia, of reading the penultimate story.

Reference 3: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=maigret. Reading Simenon clearly goes back to at least 2008.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/02/simenon-1.html. So my collected edition of Maigret looks to go back to the beginning of 2016. So it seems it took me a while to get going: perhaps I needed to be of a certain age?