The Dancer at Gai-Moulin by Georges Simenon (Review #24)

The Dancer at the Gai-Moulin by Georges Simenon

Blurb

The city of Simenon’s youth comes to life in this new translation of this disturbing novel set in Liège, book ten in the new Penguin Maigret series.

In the darkness, the main room is as vast as a cathedral. A great empty space. Some warmth is still seeps from the radiators. Delfosse strikes a match. They stop a moment to catch their breath, and work out how far they have still to go. And suddenly the match falls to the ground, as Delfosse gives a sharp cry and rushes back towards the washroom door. In the dark, he loses his way, returns and bumps into Chabot.

Review

Another fantastic Maigret book and one which was quite strange because Maigret didn’t actually make his presence known until about half way through the book. The book is set in the rougher part of Liege which was in fact Simenon’s home town.

The story is centred around two useless teenagers who are doing their very best at ruining their lives. Delfosse is from a wealthy family and Chabot is from a poor family but he has a good job in an office. However, the pair are living way beyond their means and spending all their time out partying and to keep funding this they have taken to stealing.

Whilst trying to rob another location the two boys find something very unexpected and from that night everything starts to go wrong for them. The mysteries also keep mounting up from that night.

I will be honest I missed Maigret’s presence in this book and found it lacked a special something by not having him appear until later. The case is rather tangled and I never knew what to expect next but that just made the book a real page turner. I really enjoyed this book but I did miss Maigret so I give this book 4 out of 5 Dragons.

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About the author

Georges Simenon (1903-1989) was a Belgian writer who published nearly 500 novels and many short stories. Simenon is best known as the creator of the Maigret stories.