Mon ami Maigret [The Methods of Maigret]
Tumacacori [Tucson, Arizona], February 1949.
177 f. recto ch. 2 to 176, bound in 1 vol. (190 x 270 mm). Brown sheepskin, cold-tooled fillets on covers, ribbed spine, gilt title, folder and slipcase.
The only manuscript of the novel, published in 1949 by Presses de la Cité, as a typescript extensively corrected by the author.
We apologize for the imperfect translation generated by Deepl for the purposes of the show.
The novel was typed directly on a typewriter and this typing was not preceded by an autograph manuscript: the result is a document of great interest, dotted with numerous corrections in dark blue ink (the deleted words being crossed out in blue ink or blue bold pencil), then corrections in another hand in red ink or blue ballpoint pen.
It is signed and dated “February 2, 1949” from Tumacacori – not far from Tucson, in the heart of Arizona. It is signed and dated “February 2, 1949” in Tumacacori – not far from Tucson, in the heart of Arizona. It was the last novel to be written there, almost 9,000 km from the island of Porquerolles where the action takes place: a peculiar investigation – revolving around the world of art and that of fake paintings – for Commissioner Maigret, assisted by a British colleague, Mr. Pyke, a Scotland Yard agent, curious about his famous methods. The two policemen leave Paris for the Mediterranean and, thanks to the testimony of several inhabitants of the island, gather the evidence that will enable them to shed light on a crime.
Porquerolles was indeed an island well known to Simenon: the couple Georges Simenon and Tigy discovered it in May 1926 and spent five months in a cabin at the Grand Langoustier, a place that would inspire Simenon to write the eponymous short story “Le Grand Langoustier” in 1931. After another stay in 1934, Simenon came back briefly to the island in 1941 and tried to move his personal effects there during the Occupation. It was indeed his gardener, Angelo Brandis, who carried out this operation in January 1944, when the island was deserted by its inhabitants on the orders of the German occupiers. Simenon came back one last time to his “ideal island” in 1955, and the place provided the setting for several novels, including Le Cercle des Mahé. It was there that Tigy was buried; her son Marc Simenon (born in 1939) joined her there in 1999.
Collection J.-M.B. (Sotheby’s, June 24, 2003); Aristophil, 17 (Drouot, April 3, 2019).
Pierre Deligny and Claude Menguy, Simenon de Porquerolles. Five stays on “an ideal island”, 2003; Maurice Piron, Michel Lemoine, L’Univers de Simenon, guide des romans et nouvelles de Georges Simenon, Presses de la Cité, 1983; Menguy, 152.
