This is a book about having a cold—the way your world becomes smeary with phlegm as you blink & sneeze. When you’re sick, all of Paris is sick –if you are Maigret, trudging down the Rue Fortuny into the “biting north wind,” seeking the killer of Oscar Chabut, a wholesale wine merchant whose business was ironically named “Le Vin des Moines” (the wine of monks). Oscar died walking out of a whorehouse. His mistress—whom everyone called “the Grasshopper”—is the only person who wept for him. We learn all this by the 68th page. Is this mystery novel an attack on capitalism? I say yes.
The biggest suspense of the book: “Will Maigret overcome his cold?” [Sorry, I can’t reveal the ending.]
