Film Notes: Loving Vincent (2017) written and directed by Dorota Kobiela & Hugh Welchman

PL – UK  / 94 min / Color / BreakThru Films, Trademark Films Dir: Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman Pro: Hugh Welchman, Ivan MacTaggart, Sean Bobbit Scr: Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman, Jacek Dehnel Cin: Tristan Oliver, Lukasz Zal Mus: Clint Mansell Cast: Douglas Booth, Jerome Flynn, Robert Gulaczyk, Helen McCrory, Chris O’Dowd, Saoirse Ronan Synopsis: On 27th July 1890 a gaunt figure stumbled down a drowsy high street at twilight in the small French country town of Auvers. The man was carrying nothing; his hands clasped to a fresh bullet wound leaking blood from his belly. This was Vincent van Gogh, then a little known artist; now the most famous artist in the world. His tragic death has long been known, what has remained a mystery is how and why he came to be shot. Loving Vincent tells that story. Release dates: 2 June 2017 (Annecy International Animation Film Festival); 22 September 2017 (USA); 6 October 2017 (Poland); 13 October 2017 (UK); 12 January 2018 (Spain) IMDb Rating: 7.9.

Last week, Begoña and I had the opportunity to watch Loving Vicent, a 2017 animated film written and directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman. The title refers to the standard phrase used by the artist to say goodbye to his brother Theo in the letters he wrote him. The story begins in the summer of 1891, about a year after his death, and revolves around the task that the postman Joseph Roulin entrusted to his son Arnaud, to deliver to Theo van Gogh the last letter from his brother  Vincent. This job will not be exempt of difficulties, but Arnaud will change his attitude during the course of his assignment, from a complete indifference towards a kind of fascination for the painter’s figure that takes him to try to find out the secret that hides  behind the death of the artist.

I would not like to be excessively negative in my appreciation of this film, and I regret to say that it did not lived up to my expectations. I agree with the following comment at The Hollywood Review: ‘ …., the death of van Gogh turns into a murder mystery that revisits his suicide from multiple angles, with a young man named Armand Roulin ….., serving as both detective and narrator. It’s a plot device that keeps the suspense afloat but can also feel somewhat manufactured, if not downright hammy, at times, turning the allusive van Gogh into the protagonist of a garden-variety crime novel.’

Directors Statement

Loving Vincent, the world’s first fully painted feature film, is written & directed by Dorota Kobiela & Hugh Welchman, and produced by Poland’s BreakThru Films & UK’s Trademark Films. The film brings the paintings of Vincent van Gogh to life to tell his remarkable story. Every frame of the film, totalling around 65,000, is an oil-painting hand-painted by 125 professional oil-painters who travelled from around the world to the Loving Vincent studios in Poland and Greece to be a part of the production. As remarkable as Vincent’s brilliant paintings, is his passionate and ill-fated life, and mysterious death. No other artist has attracted more attention than Vincent van Gogh. Variously labelled a martyr, a lustful satyr, a madman, a genius and a layabout, the real Vincent is at once revealed in his letters, and obscured by myth and time. Vincent himself said in his last letter: ‘We cannot speak other than by our paintings’. We take him at his word and let the paintings tell the real story of Vincent van Gogh. Loving Vincent was first shot as a live action film with actors then hand-painted over frame-by-frame in oils. The final effect is an interaction of the performance of the actors playing Vincent’s famous portraits, and the performance of the painting animators, bringing these characters into the medium of paint. Loving Vincent stars famous faces to match the famous paintings they portray. (Source: European Film Awards, EFA)

Directors Biography

Dorota Kobiela – Writer and Director.
A graduate from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Dorota Kobiela was awarded the “Minister of Culture scholarship” for special achievements in painting and graphics for four consecutive years. Through friends Dorota discovered animation and film, and immediately threw herself into learning these new artistic disciplines, attending The Warsaw Film School, Faculty for Directing. She has directed one live action short film, THE HART IN HAND (2006) and five animated shorts – THE LETTER (2004), LOVE ME (2004), MR. BEAR (2005), CHOPIN’S DRAWINGS (2011) and LITTLE POSTMAN (2011). LITTLE POSTMAN was the world’s first, and to her knowledge still only, Stereoscopic Painting Animation film, and won Stereoscopic Best Short Film at the LA 3D Film Festival, 3D Stereo Media (Liege), 3D Film & Music Fest (Barcelona).
For her sixth animated short, LOVING VINCENT, Dorota had planned to combine her passion for painting and film, and to paint the entire film herself. However, once she expanded the project into a feature film the task of writing and directing was such that she has to content herself with directing the [124] painters, although she still managed to paint a few shots in the film that she devised to bring her back to painting!

Hugh Welchman – co-Writer, co-Director and Producer
Hugh graduated from Oxford University with a degree in PPE and a vague notion of wanting to make films. He supported himself through teaching history, selling carpets, and even selling fish, while he joined various grass roots film co-operatives in London. After a few disastrous experiences, where the drama was all behind the camera instead of in front of it, Hugh sought out training at The National Film & Television School.
His graduation film, CROWSTONE, won the Cinefoundation Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and he was awarded the Sam Mendes Shakespeare Prize. He got his first professional experience producing short films for Monty Python, and then set up BreakThru Films. In 2008 Hugh was awarded an Oscar for BreakThru’s first major production, PETER AND THE WOLF. The film also picked up several other top prizes including the Annecy Cristal and the Rose D’or. PETER AND THE WOLF premiered at a sold out Royal Albert Hall accompanied live by Philharmonic Orchestra, then at the Hollywood Bowl, and has since been performed at over 70 concert halls world-wide. His next film, MAGIC PIANO & THE CHOPIN SHORTS premiered in Beijing’s Forbidden City with pianist Lang Lang, then at London’s South Bank Centre and New York’s Lincoln Centre, and has since been performed in 30 major venues around the world with live solo piano accompaniment. After falling in love with Polish painter and director, Dorota Kobiela, Hugh also fell in love with her film project, LOVING VINCENT, and has been working with her on it ever since. (Source: European Film Awards, EFA)

“Loving Vincent”: Interview with Directors Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman

Loving Vincent’: Film Review The Hollywood Reporter

The Oxford Culture Review

Official site

Review: Have Mercy on Us All, 2001 (Adamsberg #3) by Ferd Vargas (Tran: David Bellos)

Esta entrada es bilingüe, para ver la versión en castellano desplazarse hacia abajo

Vintage, 2004. Format: Paperback. First published in Great Britain in 2003 by The Harvill Press. Originally published in French as Pars vite et reviens tard by Édtions Viviane Hamy, Paris 2001. English translation by David Bellos, 2003. ISBN: 9780099453642. 400 pages.

Synopsis: Three times a day in a Parisian square, a curious modern-day crier announces the news items that are left in his box. Over the course of a few days he receives a number of disturbing and portentous messages of malicious intent, all of them referring to the Black Death. Strange marks have also appeared on the doors of several buildings: symbols once used to ward off the plague. Detective Commissaire Adamsberg begins to sense a connection, even a grotesque menace. Then charred and flea-bitten corpses are found. The press seizes on their plague-like symptoms, and the panic sets in…

My take: Blacklisted from his trade Joss Le Guern, after coming out of prison on charges of attempted manslaughter for losing two men of his crew when his boat sank in the Irish Sea, moved to Paris. Following in his family footsteps, he became a town crier of the modern era. Seven years had passed now since he undertook his new trade. His beginnings were not easy, but finally he found the right spot in the square where Boulevard Edgar-Quinet crosses Rue Delambre. His routine was a simple one. The messages, sealed in envelopes coupled with a five franc coin, were to be deposited in a box installed for that purpose and, later on, he read them out aloud, not before making a selection of those that were not to be read. Unread messages could be withdrawn together with their five-franc fee. One day he received a rather cryptic message that, with different texts, started to be repeated throughout several days. Those messages came to the attention of Hervé Decambrais and, ultimately, they turned out to be passages announcing different outbreaks of bubonic plague. Around the same time, a young woman comes before Commissaire Principal Adamsberg to report that some kind of silly joker had painted all the access doors in the staircase of her block with a strange mark that resembles number four reflected in a mirror. As the story progresses, these events bring back memories of the outbreaks of the Black Death, the plague that spread through a large part of Europe until the early twentieth century, when it was finally believed eradicated. But Adamsberg and his team can do nothing to prevent a burst of panic among the population until the first corpses begun to pile up, 

Among my reading targets of the year, I intend to complete some of the series by my favourite authors. And Fred Vargas is, no doubt, one of them. Paradoxically, I was lacking reading in her Adamsberg’s series, the first book to be translated into English in 2003 by David Bellos, despite the fact of being actually the third one in chronological order. Anyway, Have Mercy on Us All (French: Pars vite et reviens tard, lit. “Go out fast and come back late”) is a 2001 novel by French author Fred Vargas. The action takes place in present-day France and, as usual, Vargas includes elements from the past that get themselves pretty well interlock with the story to the extent of ending up seeming pretty much credible. At the expense of repeating myself, I consider Vargas one of the voices most original and interesting we can find in the current state of detective fiction. Her books always surprise me with new and daring proposals and this novel is no exception. Her unbridled imagination manages to keep my attention at all times and the unexpected denouement has not disappoint me at all. One of her greatest merits, as an author, lies in the fact of having found and developed a universe of her own populated with some characters as unique as Adamsberg and Danglard, among several others. As has already been said in some other review ‘Have Mercy On Us All is a fun, disturbing, quirky, engrossing, charming, fascinating read.’ And I fully subscribe it. 

My rating: A (I loved it)

About the author: Fred Vargas is the pseudonym of the French historian, archaeologist and writer Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau (often mistakenly spelled “Audouin-Rouzeau”). She is the daughter of Philippe Audoin(-Rouzeau), a surrealist writer who was close to André Breton, and the sister of the historian Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, a noted specialist of the First World War who inspired her the character of Lucien Devernois.
Archeo-zoologist and historian by trade, she undertook a project on the epidemiology of the Black Death and bubonic plague, the result of which was a scientific work published in 2003 and still considered definitive in this research area: Les chemins de la peste : Le rat la puce et l’homme (Pest Roads). As a novelist, Fred Vargas writes mostly crime stories. She found writing was a way to combine her interests and relax from her job as a scientist. Her novels are set in Paris and feature the adventures of Chief Inspector Adamsberg and his team. Her interest in the Middle Ages is manifest in many of her novels, especially through the person of Marc Vandoosler, a young specialist in the period.She separated her public persona as a writer from her scientific persona by adopting the pseudonym Fred Vargas. “Fred” is the diminutive of her given name, Frédérique, while with “Vargas”, she has chosen the same pseudonym than her twin sister, Jo Vargas (pseudonym of Joëlle Audoin-Rouzeau), a painter. For both sisters, the pseudonym “Vargas” derives from the Ava Gardner character in “The Barefoot Contessa”. Her crime fiction policiers have won three International Dagger Awards from the Crime Writers Association, for three successive novels: in 2006, 2008, 2009 and 2011. In each case her translator into English has been Sîan Leonard, who was also recognized by the international award. (Source: Fantastic Fiction)

To date the complete series of Commissaire Adamsberg books comprises the following titles: L’Homme aux cercles bleus, 1991 (The Chalk Circle Man, 2009); L’Homme à l’envers, 1999 (Seeking Whom He May Devour, 2004); Pars vite et reviens tard, 2001 (Have Mercy on Us All, 2003); Sous les vents de Neptune, 2004 (Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand, 2007); Dans les bois éternels, 2006 (This Night’s Foul Work, 2008); Un lieu incertain, 2008 (An Uncertain Place, 2011); L’Armée furieuse, 2011 (The Ghost Riders of Ordebec, 2013); Temps glaciaires, 2015 (A Climate of Fear, 2016); and more recently Quand sort la recluse, 2017 (literarily When the Recluse Comes Out, the recluses are a genus of venomous spiders).

About the translator: David Bellos was educated at Oxford and teaches French and Comparative Literature at Princeton, where he also directs the Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication. He has writen biographies of Georges Perec (1993) and Jacques Tati (1999) that have been translated into many languages, and an introduction to translation studies, Is That A Fish in Your Ear? The Amazing Adventure of Translation (2011). He has translated numerous authors from French (Perec, Vargas, Kadare, Simenon, Antelme, Fournel) and offers a new understanding of the extraordinary life and work of Romain Gary in Romain Gary. A Tall Story (2010). He is currently writing a book about Les Misérables. (Source: Princeton University)

Have Mercy on Us All has been reviewed at The Complete Review, Euro Crime, Words Without Borders, the crime segments, reviewing the evidence, The View from the Blue House,

Penguin UK publicity page

Simon & Schuster publicity page

Viviane Hamy publicity page (French)

Fred Vargas page at Wikipedia

Huye rápido, vete lejos, de Fred Vargas

Sinposis: Tres veces al día, en una plaza parisina, un curioso pregonero moderno anuncia las noticias que le han dejado en su casillero. Durante el curso de unos pocos días recibe una serie de perturbadores y aciagos mensajes con maliciosas intenciones, todos ellos acerca de la Peste Negra. También han aparecido extrañas marcas en las puertas de varios edificios: símbolos utilizados antes para intentar auyentar la plaga. El comisario Adamsberg comienza a sentir cierta relación, incluso una grotesca amenaza. Luego se encuentran cadáveres carbonizados y con picaduras de pulgas. La prensa se aferra a sus síntomas parecidos a los de la peste y el pánico se pone en marcha …

Mi opinión: En la lista negra de su oficio, Joss Le Guern, después de salir de la cárcel acusado de intento de homicidio por perder a dos hombres de su tripulación cuando su barco se hundió en el Mar de Irlanda, se mudó a París. Siguiendo los pasos de su familia, se convirtió en un pregonero de la era moderna. Siete años habían pasado desde que emprendió su nuevo oficio. Sus comienzos no fueron fáciles, pero finalmente encontró el lugar adecuado en la plaza donde el Boulevard Edgar-Quinet cruza Rue Delambre. Su rutina era simple. Los mensajes, sellados en sobres junto con una moneda de cinco francos, debían depositarse en una caja instalada a tal efecto y, más tarde, los leía en voz alta, no sin antes hacer una selección de los que no debían leerse. Los mensajes no leídos podían retirarse junto con su tarifa de cinco francos. Un día recibió un mensaje bastante críptico que, con diferentes textos, comenzó a repetirse a lo largo de varios días. Esos mensajes llamaron la atención de Hervé Decambrais y, finalmente, resultaron ser pasajes que anunciaban diferentes brotes de peste bubónica. Por la misma época, una mujer joven se presenta ante el comisario principal Adamsberg para informar que una especie de bromista había pintado todas las puertas de acceso en la escalera de su bloque con una extraña marca que se asemeja al número cuatro reflejado en un espejo. A medida que avanza la historia, estos eventos nos traen recuerdos de los estallidos de Peste Negra, la plaga que se extendió por gran parte de Europa hasta principios del siglo XX, cuando finalmente se creyó erradicada. Pero Adamsberg y su equipo no pueden hacer nada por evitar una explosión de pánico entre la población hasta que los primeros cadáveres comienzan a acumularse,

Entre mis objetivos de lectura del año, tengo la intención de completar algunas de las series de mis autores favoritos. Y Fred Vargas es, sin duda, uno de ellos. Paradójicamente, me faltaba leer en su serie de Adamsberg, el primer libro que David Bellos tradujo al inglés en 2003, a pesar de que en realidad era el tercero en orden cronológico. De todos modos, Huye rápido, vete lejos (en francés: Pars vite et reviens tard ) es una novela de 2001 de la autora francesas Fred Vargas. La acción tiene lugar en la Francia actual y, como de costumbre, Vargas incluye elementos del pasado que se entrelazan bastante bien con la historia hasta el punto de parecer bastante creíbles. A expensas de repetirme, considero que Vargas es una de las voces más originales e interesantes que podemos encontrar en el estado actual de la novela policíaca. Sus libros siempre me sorprenden con propuestas nuevas y atrevidas, y esta novela no es una excepción. Su imaginación desenfrenada logra mantener mi atención en todo momento y el inesperado desenlace no me ha decepcionado en absoluto. Uno de sus mayores méritos, como autora, radica en el hecho de haber encontrado y desarrollado un universo propio poblado con algunos personajes tan únicos como Adamsberg y Danglard, entre otros. Como ya se ha dicho en otra reseña, “Huye rápido, vete lejos es una lectura divertida, inquietante, peculiar, absorbente, encantadora y fascinante”. Y lo suscribo completamente.

Mi valoración: A (Me encantó)

Sobre la autora: Fred Vargas es el seudónimo de la historiadora, arqueóloga y escritora francesa Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau (a menudo erróneamente escrito “Audouin-Rouzeau”). Hija de Philippe Audoin (-Rouzeau), un escritor surrealista cercano a André Breton, y hermana de la historiadora Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, una renombrada especialista en la Primera Guerra Mundial que la inspiró al personaje de Lucien Devernois.
Arqueozoóloga, e historiadora de profesión, realizó un trabajo sobre la epidemiología de la peste negra y la peste bubónica, cuyo resultado fue un estudio científico publicado en el 2003 y aún considerado definitivo en esta área de investigación: Les chemins de la peste: Le rat la puce et l’homme. Como novelista, Fred Vargas escribe principalmente historias policíacas. Descubrió que escribir era una manera de combinar sus intereses y relajarse de su trabajo como científica. Sus novelas están ambientadas en París y cuentan las aventuras del inspector jefe Adamsberg y su equipo. Su interés por la Edad Media se manifiesta en muchas de sus novelas, especialmente a través de la persona de Marc Vandoosler, un joven especialista en el período. Ella separó su imagen pública como novelista de su imagen científica al adoptar el seudónimo de Fred Vargas. “Fred” es el diminutivo de su nombre de pila, Frédérique, mientras que con “Vargas”, ella ha elegido el mismo seudónimo que su hermana gemela, Jo Vargas (seudónimo de la pintora Joëlle Audoin-Rouzeau). Para ambas, el seudónimo “Vargas” proviene del personaje de Ava Gardner en “La condesa descalza”. Sus roman policiers han obtenido tres International Dagger Awards de la Crime Writers Association en 2006, 2007, 2009 y 2013. En cada caso, su traductora al inglés ha sido Sîan Leonard, quien también fue reconocida por el mencionado galardón internacional.

Hasta la fecha, la serie completa de libros del Comisario Adamsberg comprende los siguientes títulos: L’Homme aux cercles bleus, 1991 (El hombre de los círculos azules, 2007); L’Homme à l’envers, 1999 (El hombre del revés, 2001 y 2011); Pars vite et reviens tard, 2001 (Huye rápido, vete lejos, 2003); Sous les vent de Neptune, 2004 (Bajo los vientos de Neptuno, 2006); Dans les bois éternels, 2006 (La tercera virgen, 2008); Un lieu incertain, 2008 (Un lugar incierto, 2010); L’Armée furieuse, 2011 (El ejército furioso, 2011); Temps glaciaires, 2015 (Tiempos de hielo, 2015); y más recientemente Quand sort la recluse, 2017 (Cuando sale la reclusa, 2018)

Otra reseña en Detectives literarios

Ediciones Siruela página de publicidad

Georges Simenon’s Maigret Books (An Update)

This entry was first intended as a private note, but I have thought it can be of some interest to readers of this blog. Most of this information has been taken from the excellent resources provided at Maigret forum.

I have highlighted in the text, in bold, the books that are generally recognised as Maigret bests. For some his best novels can be found in The Gallimard cycle, but my personal preference, at this stage, is tending towards the Fayard cycle. However I must recognise I have read very few of the books from his last period, the ones published between 1955 and 1972, after his return to Europe.

Please bear in mind that this post is a work in progress, you may read my reviews of the books I’ve read so far clicking on the books’ titles. Besides, your comments are welcome.

The Other Maigrets. Seven “Maigrets” have apparently never been published in English — three short stories, and four novels written in the summer of 1929, published under the pseudonyms Christian Brulls and Georges Sim: the so-called “precursors of Maigret,” since Simenon proclaimed that “Pietr-le-letton” was “the first Maigret”

The Early Maigrets, (The 19 novels of the Fayard cycle): Pietr the Latvian (Pietr-le-Letton, mai 1931), The Late Monsieur Gallet (Monsieur Gallet, décédé, février 1931), The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien (Le Pendu de Saint-Pholien (février 1931), The Carter of ‘La Providence’ (Le Charretier de la Providence, mars 1931), The Yellow Dog (Le Chien jaune, avril 1931), Night at the Crossroads (La Nuit du carrefour, juin 1931), A Crime in Holland (Un crime en Hollande, juillet 1931), The Grand Banks Café (Au rendez-vous des Terre-Neuvas, août 1931), A Man’s Head (La Tête d’un homme – L’homme de la Tour Eiffel) septembre 1931), The Dancer at the Gai-Moulin (La Danseuse du Gai-Moulin, novembre 1931), The Two-Penny Bar, (La Guinguette à deux sous, décembre 1931), The Shadow Puppet (L’Ombre chinoise, janvier 1932), The Saint-Fiacre Affair (L’Affaire Saint-Fiacre, février 1932), The Flemish House (Chez les Flamands, mars 1932), The Madman of Bergerac (Le Fou de Bergerac, avril 1932), The Misty Harbour (Le Port des brumes, mai 1932), Liberty Bar (Liberty Bar, juillet 1932), Lock Nº 1 (L’Écluse nº 1, juin 1933), and Maigret (Maigret, mars 1934)

The Gallimard cycle, 6 novels: Cécile is Dead (Gallimard, 1942); The Cellars of the Majestic (Gallimard, 1942); The Judgeʻs House (Gallimard, 1942); Signed, Picpus (Gallimard, 1944); Inspector Cadaver (Gallimard, 1944), and Félicie (Gallimard, 1944).

The Presses de la Cité cycle (50 novels)

a) In the United States and Canada, 1945–1955: Maigret Gets Angry (’47), Maigret in New York (’47), Maigret’s Holiday (’48), Maigret and His Dead Man(’48), Maigret’s First Case (’49), My Friend Maigret (’49), Maigret at the Coroner’s (’49), Maigret and the Old Lady (’50), Madame Maigret’s Friend, (’50), Maigret’s Memoirs (’51), Maigret at Picratt’s (’51), Maigret Takes a Room, (’51), Maigret and the Tall Woman, (’51), Maigret, Lognon and the Gangsters, (’52), Maigret’s Revolver(’52), Maigret and the Man on the Bench, (’53), Maigret is Afraid (’53), Maigret’s Mistake (’53), Maigret Goes to School (’54), Maigret and the Dead Girl (’54), Maigret and the Minister (’55), Maigret and the Headless Corpse (’55).

b) The return to Europe, 1955–1972: Maigret Sets a Trap (’55), Maigret’s Failure (’56), Maigret Enjoys Himself aka Maigret’s Little Joke (’57), Maigret Travels (’58), Maigret`s Doubts (’58), Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses (’59), Maigret’s Secret (’59), Maigret in Court (’60), Maigret and the Old People (’60), Maigret and the Lazy Burglar (’61), Maigret and the Good People of Montparnasse (’62), Maigret and the Saturday Caller (’62), Maigret And The Tramp (’63), Maigret’s Fury (’63), Maigret And The Ghost (’64), Maigret Holds His Own (’64)

The following titles don’t have yet a publication date and their new title on Penguin’s paperback reissues:

The Patience of Maigret, Maigret Bides His Time (’65), Maigret and the Nahour Case (’67), Maigret’s Pickpocket (’67), Maigret Takes the Waters, Maigret in Vichy (’68), Maigret Hesitates (’68), Maigret’s Boyhood Friend (’68),Maigret and the Killer (’69), Maigret and the Wine Merchant (’70), Maigret and the Madwoman (’70), Maigret and the Loner (’71), Maigret and the Flea, Maigret and the Informer (’71), Maigret and Monsieur Charles (’72).

The 28 Maigret short stories

La Péniche aux deux pendus, L’Affaire du Boulevard Beaumarchais, La Fenêtre ouverte, Monsieur Lundi, Jeumont, 51 minutes d’arrêt, Peine de mort, Les Larmes de bougie, Rue Pigalle, Une erreur de Maigret, L’Amoureux de Madame Maigret, La vieille dame de Bayeux, L’Auberge aux noyés, Stan le tueur, L’Étoile du Nord, Tempête sur la Manche, Mademoiselle Berthe et son amant, Le Notaire du Châteauneuf, L’improbable Monsieur Owen, Ceux du Grand Café, L’Homme dans la rue, Vente à la bougie, Menaces de mort, La Pipe de Maigret, On ne tue pas les pauvres types, Le Témoinage de l’enfant de chœur, Le Client le plus obstiné du monde, Maigret et l’inspecteur malgracieux (malchanceux) and Un Noël de Maigret.

The majority of this short stories, translated into English, are collected in two books: Maigret’s Pipe: Seventeen Stories by Georges Simenon and Maigret’s Christmas: Nine Stories. Three of this stories, previously untranslated into English, are now available at the excellent Maigret Forum website:  The Group at the Grand Café (1938); The Unlikely Monsieur Owen (1938) and Death Threats (1942).

Please let me know of any error or omission you may find on this page. Thanks beforehand.

(last updated 07-05-2018)