In a picturesque seaside resort a young maid is poisoned by taking medicine intended for her elderly employer. So it stands to reason that the victim should have been the old lady… or does it? At her and her politician son’s request Inspector Maigret travels to Normandy to investigate the crime and encounters a family whose dynamics are suffused by hatred and greed.
Simenon peels back the layers slowly to show us the true faces of his characters, and he contrasts it nicely with the appeal of the locale. Maigret himself reminisces about holidays spent in similar places as a child, and it makes him long for the ideal world he believed in before he grew up and his profession began to all too often show him the dark side behind the friendly façade. So this is really the topic of the book, the rot that can hide even behind the most beautiful or benign-seeming of fronts.
That’s not the most groundbreaking of subjects but Simenon has a way of making it interesting regardless. Especially the parts where he interviews the different characters and uncovers more and more pieces of the real story are incredibly well-written. However, in my opinion there are much better entries in the Inspector Maigret series than this one, because some developments are simply too obvious and a few of the characters terribly clichéd.
It’s still definitely worth a read, especially if you enjoy crime fiction that’s more interested in the humanity and psychology of its characters and not so much in depicting gore or highly dramatic events, although there is a rather nice reveal scene at the end.