The first half of my April reading prompt--Rain. I know I can always depend on Georges Simenon and Chief Inspector Maigret to serve up a slice of mysterious atmosphere. The stories almost always ooze with atmosphere of one kind or another. I didn't know just how rainy Simenon's 1931 novel, Lock 14, would be. I pulled it from my bookcase as the first line of the blurb read "One rainy night a canal worker stumbles across the strangled body of Mary Lampson in a stable near lock 14." I also had no idea just how much I would learn about canal locks, something I have never encountered before but now am quite curious about.
This is a slim novel, like most of his mysteries, so it will not take long to discover the culprit who strangled Mme. Lampson (was it her brute of a husband . . . probably not that simple). Coming in at a mere 154 pages I should know the killer's name by the end of the weekend. Funnily enough the rainy setting rather complements the weather we are having here locally. (Happily only rain and nothing more to compare).
I am enjoying the descriptions!
"Everything was streaming with rain. That was the dominant note. And the people passing by were dark, shining figures bent forward."
"And the rain went on falling relentlessly on an ugly landscape. To the left and right, the horizon was barred by chalky hills streaked with black and white, where the vines, at this time of year, looked like wooden crosses in a war cemetery."
Maigret is grumpy by the way!
"With a scowl on his face, and dripping with water, he watched a dozen boats go through the lock."
"He was not even trying to find a clue properly speaking, but rather steep himself in the atmosphere, to familiarize himself with this canal life that was so different from all that he knew."
"The rain was pattering on the deck above them."
"Then, all alone in the rainy night, he had walked along the long ribbon of the road."
"And over everything, a bluish, rainy mist, in which he silhouettes of motionless horses could be made out, and men going from one boat to another."
I wonder if he can do the same thing with the idea of sunshine as he can with rain? Maybe I'll try another Maigret to find out, but for now I am enjoying a rainy week on the French canals.