The Usual Suspects Mystery Reading Group will be exploring the role of woman as detective in a two-book discussion series, “An Unsuitable Job for a Woman?”
The first book, being discussed next Sunday at 2 p.m., is The Friend of Madame Maigret by Georges Simenon.
Maigret attempts to prove that a murder has actually been committed without a corpse and he begins to suspect that his wife’s earlier strange encounter with a woman and her baby may hold the key.
Although Maigret is a police professional and Madame Maigret is a stay-at-home wife they often work together as a team.
According to the official Maigret website, “Mme Maigret provides the calm balance to Maigret's hectic working life … Her female insights are invaluable to Maigret and her wise answers to his apparently innocuous questions often help him with his cases.”
Simenon was one of the most prolific writers of the twentieth century and about 550 million copies of his works have been printed.
He is best known, however, for his 75 novels and 28 short stories featuring Maigret. The first novel in the series, The Strange Case of Peter the Lett, appeared in 1931, and the last one, Maigret and Monsieur Charles, was published in 1972. The Maigret novels were translated into many languages and several of them were turned into films, radio plays and television series.
On December 21st, the Usual Suspects will discuss The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. The first book in this beloved series tells the story of the delightfully cunning and enormously engaging Precious Ramotswe, who uses her small inheritance to set up shop, drawn to her profession to “help people with problems in their lives.”
African bush tea will be served and we will hold our second annual mystery book swap at the conclusion of the discussion.
Hope you can join us. New faces are always welcome. To reserve a copy of either book, call 291-4821.
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, by the way, was the title of a classic 1972 detective novel by P. D. James, which features a young detective in her early twenties named Cordelia Gray who inherits a detective agency. The responsibility of running such a business single-handedly might have persuaded most young women to sell it off and pursue a more "female" line of work, but Cordelia eagerly accepts the challenge, knowing full well that her youth and inexperience -- not to mention her gender -- might discourage prospective clients.
