SIMENON THE TECHNICIAN.

SIMENON THE TECHNICIAN. Joan Acocella cites Julian Symons as saying that the Maigret stories were not detective stories because Simenon was not interested in detection. I concede that Simenon is not interested in forensic clues of the Sherlock Holmes kind, but Simenon creates great variety within the detective story form. He has, for example, the clue (which I mentioned here) that is in plain sight from the beginning of the book, the classical case with 5 suspects (in Simenon’s case, the victim has a lover for different days of the week), and a Nero-Wolfe type denouement with all the suspects assembled to hear the solution, but with the twist that one of the suspects conducts the unraveling while Maigret watches.)