Guinguette by the Seine
Guinguette by the Seine is a detective novel by Belgian writer Georges Simenon, featuring his character Inspector Jules Maigret.
Plot summary
While visiting a condemned man in prison, he comments to Maigret that he knows someone at a "guinguette a deux sous" who is equally deserving of the death penalty. Lenoir further reveals that he and an accomplice had witnessed a man whom they knew from the bar take a body and dump it in the Canal Saint-Martin.Maigret is unable to find this tuppenny bar, but later he chances to overhear a man mention it; following him, Maigret discovers he is M. Basso, a businessman, married and with a mistress, who leads him to a party at an inn on the Seine at Morsang. Mingling with the crowd, Maigret is invited to join the party by James, an English bank clerk, and discovers they meet regularly there at weekends.
Now part of the set, Maigret returns the following week, where one of the men, Feinstein, is shot dead by Basso after an altercation.
Now Maigret has two deaths to investigate; he also uncovers blackmail, murder, adultery and financial irregularities in the gay social set before unmasking the murderer.
Maigret's method
Simenon describes Maigret's view of the turning point in an investigation; where it goes from a frustrating search for any lead at all, to the point where they start to come thick and fast.He also describes an investigation as a matter of painstaking labour and good luck; how after instigating a county-wide search for a suspect, he was eventually found when an off-duty policeman became suspicious of an old woman buying 22f worth of ham, far more than she would need for herself.