I used to think Georges Simenon was French, but he only moved to Paris in 1922, after his mother died. He was Belgian, born in the Outremeuse district of Liège.
At the age of 16, he joined the Gazette de Liège as a cub reporter. Although his work only concerned mundane events, he started to explore the seamy side of life in that city. He rubbed shoulders with criminals, prostitutes, and anarchists – and even went to lectures on police technique. Two of the people he got to know well became murderers later on, and appeared in his novel Les Trois crimes de mes amis.
He wrote Detective, the first Maigret novel, in 1930. Maigret was like him in some respects – a pipe smoker with a philosophical turn of mind – but not in his attitude to women. While Maigret was a happily married man with a ‘Darby and Joan’ relationship with his wife, Simenon seems to have collected extras who even became part of the family. For years, he lived on a boat, travelling around the French canals with his wife, a dog, and a housekeeper with whom he became romantically involved. She remained a member of the ‘family’ for decades, even after his wife caught them out.
He seems to have been an opportunist, with no political sympathies. This got him into trouble with both sides during the Nazi occupation of France. Local farmers denounced him as a collaborator, but the Gestapo – believing his name was derived from ‘Simon’ – suspected that he was Jewish. When the war ended, he was under investigation for having negotiated German film rights for his books, and was sentenced to a ban on publishing any new works for five years. Since this was not made public, it didn’t harm his public image.
He wrote a number of important books during the war, among them Le Voyageur de la Toussaint and Le Cercle des Mahé, and the city of La Rochelle eventually honored him by naming a quai after him in 1989. All round, a complex fellow and a talented writer in more than one genre.
Many Simenon titles are now available for Kindle. Click the banner below to search for them, or go to the Boutique and select the category ‘Georges Simenon’ for traditional books, posters and DVDs.
