Only Murders in my Mind
Episode 23: Georges Simenon: The Prolific Mind Behind Maigret
[Music] Welcome to Only Murders in My Mind. A random thought production. Hi, I'm Carol Bissett, a crime writer. And I invite you with my co-presenters, Liz Hedgecock and Mike Jackson, each week to our conversations on all things murderous. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Only Murders in My Mind. And as usual, I have the joy of having Liz Hedgecock with me. Hello. And Mike Jackson. Hello, Carol. Hello, Liz. Well, we three get meat again in thunder lightning or in rain. But it's actually in sunshine, exactly. [Laughter] I hope you're all well and usual thing. Will you hit the subscribe button, the like button, tell your friends about our podcast. We're really pleased with the amount of, it's called views, but it's people listening, isn't it? And yeah, as long as people want to listen, we'll carry on. And we'd love to know what you're here about. Put something in the comments as well. Yeah, we want to interact with our friends. Listeners. So today we're going to talk about a very popular detective, fictional detective, obviously. And this is May Gray. And this has gone through the years in different reincarnations, hasn't it? And we were just talking about the writer's surname and we think it's George Simian. Yeah. Simianon. Simianon. Simianon, I think. Yeah. And I have enjoyed, I've not read the books, but I have watched films, TV shows, et cetera, and always really been drawn in to this character and his method of detecting. So I know, might you enjoy this particular person, don't you? Yeah. Again, like you, Karl, I don't think I've ever read any of his books, but I do enjoy watching the TV programmes. And I think the latest one had, oh, who's playing May Gray? I want to say Sean Bean. No. Right, I can say. Right, I can say, yeah. Yeah. And it did a cracking job, in my opinion. Yeah. See, I've never seen the adaptations, but I've read some of the books. Not all of the books, but some of the books. Yeah. What did you like about the books? I think they feel very different. Yes. And it's that kind of dogged pursuit. And we talked in a previous episode about, it was our psychics episode, wasn't it? We were trying to think of someone who doesn't have a psychic, and May Gray was the person we came up with. I think, and you do get that feeling of him as a man alone, generally in Paris or someone like that, you know, stalking through the Night City, looking for their, looking for their person. There's always a bit of grittiness to them, too, and a bit of some darkness as well. Yes. And I remember watching one, and they were talking, it was very sort of like the Yorkshire Ripper type of things were when we were being murdered on the street, and we were trying to catch him. Yeah. But the killer, we were presuming it's a him, it usually is. I mean, May Gray, to me, always seems almost torn, as always having that in a turmoil, you know, that if he doesn't catch this serial killer, it would be his fault. But somebody else gets killed. You almost, you can see him having that sort of battle within himself, doubting himself. And he has to go on, even if he's tired, hungry, whatever it is, because no one else is going to do it, it's all down to him. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he wrote, apparently, correct me if you've got more information than me, 75 novels on May Gray, and 28 short stories between 1931 and 1972. That was a massive output of work. Yeah. It was a speed, a prolific writer, and a speedy writer. Yeah. Well, I think I read, he wrote, I mean, hundreds of novels, not, you know, as well as that. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you say lots of short stories, and they weren't all, a lot of them on May Gray short stories, but there were a lot of other ones as well. So he was a driven man. He was. Yes. Yeah. I mean, he was, he was known for his rapid writing pace. He'd have to be. He'd have to be. He completed a novel, usually about a week and a half. Oh, good heavens. Gosh. I mean, they are quite sure. Yes. Even so. For sure. Like mine. Very, very fast paced. Yeah. I mean, I tend to borrow the May Gray books from the Liverpool Central Library, lovely library, if you haven't been, do go. And they have like, you know, it feels like they have an absolute stack of them. But they're quite, they're quite thin, quite thin books. That's kind of something I like about it. It feels like a very concentrated experience, like having an espresso or something. Not that I drink coffee, but you know. That's interesting, because as I say, I've never read any of the books, and I always wonder whether my books are too short because they're detective, because you tend to, they tend to be quite, you know, big volumes to text. Yes. Detective stories. Yeah. So, if that works ahead, I think it's a fashion thing, to be quite honest, the length of novels, because if you think back to, I don't know, Virginia Woolf, those aren't. Yeah. Particularly long. Is it driven by the publishers, do you think? Absolutely. I've heard aspiring writers say that agents and publishers will not consider a novel, particularly of the genre that we write under, set like 65,000 words or something like that. Yeah. I mean, there's publishers who'll say, you know, your manuscript needs to be between this and this. I mean, otherwise, unfortunately, you can't consider it. And, you know, going back a long way now to Victorian times, when, you know, people experience novels mostly in parts in magazines. So if you think of Dickens, you know, you'd have a part every month. Yeah. And, you know, you'd have 20 parts, I think 19 and 20 were in the, you know, the same things you've got, double whammy. And then the whole thing would become a three volume novel because circulating libraries. Yeah. So you've got a good bang for your buck or whatever. Yeah. And we've talked about Sherlock Holmes being in a, it was serialized, wasn't it, in a magazine or a paper, the original stories, weren't they? Yeah. I think it was, was it a story of time in Strand magazine? That's right, in Strand. Yeah. And he was another prolific writer. Yeah. I think it was a poetry short story as well as all the. All the things we don't think about. And that's the thing, I suppose, you know, if you, if you think about this for the authors, I mean, it meant you had a reliable income, as long as you could get your copy in on time and in reasonable shape. It's changed, isn't it? Because when we did that show about Sherlock Holmes, one of the things we mentioned was that Conan Dog got fed up with Sherlock Holmes and killed him off. And then through popular demand, had to bring him back again. And apparently, George Sumian did the same with Megro. I don't know, I didn't know about him. And then had to bring him back. Because he was in demand. Because he was in demand? Yeah. Yeah. And I know when the, you know, you were saying about him not having a sidekick, apparently in the television series, there was him and three important characters that were always included in it. Well, as I say in the books, apparently there was a team, but when it came to the TV or films, things like that, they just narrowed it down to what they considered to be important characters and they were known. And his wife always had a very big influence. I'm just going to say that certainly in the last series I saw with Ryan Atkinson, his wife had a big set. But she seemed to be almost playing that part, going back to what he was saying just now on this, but telling him to slow down. Yeah. Because he was getting so worked up about it. She was worried about his house. She was almost that sort of person who was trying to bring him back to. Whereas in the last make where I read, he'd be thinking things like, you know, I need to go home. I need to rest. I need to go back to my wife. I need to see my wife. But he couldn't because he was in the throws of their case. Yeah. Yeah. So yes. Only. Interesting. The differences, isn't it? The original of the adaptations. Yes. But that's always the same, isn't it? Yeah. That once TV people or the film people get hold of it, they will juggle it around, juggle the story around, to fit what they think their audience can do. And also what works on the page doesn't necessarily work. It's great. To me, the information that I looked at, they said that the TV adaptations were as close to the books as they could, could keep them. But if you've not got a massive storyline to work with, you know, as you said, they're not, you know, 100,000 word novels, and you probably can't mess about with it too much. Would you think? It's that. But also, I think, from my understanding is that if an author sells her or his rights to a film company or to a TV company, then they lose control over what is adapted. Yeah. I mean, they probably get a little bit of say. Yeah. I imagine even if you have some kind of, you know, producer credit, you don't necessarily get to say you're absolutely not doing that. Yeah. I know the first guy that played me a great whose name I can't remember. I should have written it down. The writer was very pleased because the figure of me a great that he'd written was a big, big, large-than-life guy. Yeah. He smoked this pie. He used to wear different hats. He used to sort of internalize a lot, you know, about what was going on. And that the original actor was, as far as he was concerned, was like a spot-on, you know, for it. But as you say, Rowan Atkinson did a really good rendition, didn't he? I was very impressed. Considering how different he was from that original actor. I want to, I can't remember now, but I wonder whether Rowan Atkinson smoked a pipe at all. Because it's out of fashion nowadays to have smoking on television. Yeah. Well, also, I mean the other thing is, you know, in lots of places you can't smoke at all. Because of us. So, you know, it would really impede him once he had to keep knocking his out all the time before he goes in somewhere. So, yeah. Did you see, is it Michael Gambon who played Maygrove? He played Maygrove. Well, what was he like in the role, did you think? It's going back a while now. Sorry. I like Michael Gambon. Yeah. Oh, it's a good actor. Yeah. That's probably the guy I'm thinking of, actually. Yeah. Because they haven't had that many actors play the role. Well, I think the thing is with Maygrove. It's been a very popular book, but it's not necessarily been a popular TV series. No. No. Maybe not. I think it possibly was back in the, I don't know. It was the only 60s, I think. It was at its height as a television program. 60 to 63, but then, of course, there would have been re-showing it. Yes. And then this series that we're talking about now with Roan Atkinson was started in 2022. That's right. And I think even two or three, I'm not sure. I can't remember now, but they were. They were very, very, very good. The funny thing about this is talking about the Maygrove smoking pipes. I discovered that, apparently, George George Simul owned more than 300 pipes. Oh, it's a pipe smoker, wasn't it? Wow. Which is chain smoked, like his famous character, and apparently he confessed that he liked to smoke six to eight pipes during the creation of one chapter. Wow. Yeah. Good heavens. Oh, dear. It's fascinating. He's a fascinating character. Apparently, before beginning a new book, he had an unusual ritual. And that was, he'd undergo a medical checkup to ensure he was in good health. But he extended that precaution to his children as well, believing that any illness during the writing process would ruin the work. Oh. Now, that's what you call being ridiculous. Well, they wrote all those, he must have been at the doctors a lot. They wrote all those. Well, the other thing is... Well, that smoke probably preserved him. Yeah. A keeper. He was notorious for his numerous love affairs. Oh. Where did he find the time? He claimed to have had thousands of lovers. Many of them were ladies of... In a repute? That's the fella. Oh. I just wondered if he was working on his plots while all this was going on. Probably why he had to complete a novel in a week and a half. Quite possibly. Probably why he had to have medical checks on a regular basis as well. Well, I mentioned that he could see how he'd have to stay awake. Good grief. Apparently he was a very meticulous person, though, because, again, something else I found out that his work environment was quite unique. He always kept 48 sharpened pencils on his desk. And he used to throw each one away as soon as the point wore down. Rather resharpened it, he got another pencil. I suppose if you're working that quickly, you probably don't feel that you've got the time to sharpen a pencil. Well, you can just put it in the drawer and then, you know, deal with it later. Possibly, yes. But maybe they were 48 pencil novels. And apparently... But he made it to how he mentioned the length of the... He pinched a "do not disturb" sign from New York's Plaza Hotel, and he put it on the door of his study while he was writing to make sure that he wasn't disturbed. He seems like a very meticulous gentleman. Yes. Which would account for the number of novel short stories, et cetera. Well, I suppose if you get your environment the way you like it, then clearly he was protecting it all costs, I guess, you know, no blunt pencils. A little bit about his character, Mae Gray. Apparently his age, the detective's age, differed in some books. You know, he would quote that he was so old, and then the next book, he would quote that he was involved in something during the first world world, which would have made his age wrong. So I thought, well, that's good, because, you know, alone again, us modern writers forget where bodies are hidden up, don't we, Liz? Conan Doyle was another one. I mean, he got Dr Watson's first name wrong. At least once. Yeah. And as for Mrs. Watson, sometimes she's there, sometimes she's not, sometimes she's dead, sometimes she's not. Yeah. You know, it's okay. You know, the cases aren't known. They're not written in chronological order or anything. But, you know, there's a whole load of Sherlockins out there trying to piece together, like, you know, or there must be a logical explanation for this and coming up with all sorts of theories about it. No, they just forgot. And in the throes of writing, you just forgot. Unless you're a time lord, you know. It's like that meme of the curtains were just blue. It's colour, you know. It doesn't signify anything. Talking about Dr Ho. I was watching the final episode for this series with my son and our producer. Don't tell me about it because I've not seen it yet. No, I mean, either. No, I just want spoilers, please. No, just one thing in it that kept in mind me. One minute, she had two necklaces. Next minute, she had, well, one minute, she had two neck in the same scene of continuity. No, there's a time lord. True. True. Otherwise, I'm saying nothing else. Yeah. He began as police officer in Paris in his 20s. At 30, he went to work for the homicide squad and in his 40s became the chief inspector and his wife Louise, who's usually referred to as Madame Maigre. So that that's some information about the actual character. So why do you like the series so much? Well, it's, it's the atmospheric surroundings. It's Paris in the 30s. Oh, is it? It probably depends which episode. On which book it's meant to be. Yes. And it's the old way of policing. You know, it's. I remember reading the first novel. Pietraller Latviam, I think it is. And that feels like just another world. Yeah. Yeah. And that's it, isn't it? It takes you back. Yeah. It's that Gallic Noir. Gallic Noir. It's that. It was so sophisticated. It does, doesn't it? Yes. But it's, it's, it's that darkness again, isn't it? It's always the back streets, the alleys, the pretty side of it. The covers are generally monochrome. Yes. Library. I kind of feel like the series. The television series. There's not much colour in there. No. I can see one more. Even the modern ones are, you know, the risk colour, but it's very muted. Yeah. And even though, as you've just said, they're not long novels. And he, we've, I feel it's paced well for when they actually get to solve it. It doesn't, it doesn't feel like they're jumping to conclusions. So is it, is it one case per episode or do the cases go on over a visit? Is there an arc? No. I, I, I get the feel of it. I think it's a bit like Cone Dot, where each book was a individual standalone. Yeah. Yeah. I'm meant for the adaptation. So if you watch an episode of more than three, is that one case is wrapped up? Oh, trying to think when I watch that. No, I've got a, I've got a feeling they may have, may be short series, maybe only three or four episodes, but it would have covered one book. Yeah. One story. Yeah. Oh, they'll be keeping over forever then, won't they? Well, they could do. Yeah. I'm not familiar with B because it's not as, first of all, there's, there's none of that banter yet. Yeah. Even with your Nordic noir, which we've talked about before, there's usually a sidekick alongside. Yeah. I imagine if there's any banter, it'll be with, you know, the person they're trying to catch or the people who would, you know, they're trying to get information out of. But that the, his, you know, his very close crew that he works with would lay down their life for him. Yes. They would literally take a bullet for him. Yeah. So that comes over in the, in the series and probably in the books as well. Yeah. What, what inspires that loyalty? Because he's very, a very firm person. Yeah. He doesn't. Very calm. Yeah. Always, you know, level-headed. He doesn't bark at them and if something goes wrong, he might tell them why it's gone wrong, but he doesn't take them to task. So they feel they're working for a really good boss. And he's got a good relationship with his boss as well, who always believes that he's going to solve the case. I'm not sure that I ever would see it as being a blockbusting series on TV that was, you know, series one followed quickly by series two, series three, series four. Yeah. I think it's, it's not everybody's cup of tea because some, some people might find it a bit slow because he, he doesn't move at the, you know, his whole manner and the whole way that he does things is very slow, very methodical. And sometimes because he's thinking a lot. Yeah. You're not necessarily always sure about what he's thinking. You know, he's not, he's not good to share. Well, I've had all these clues and we must look at this one on that one. Yeah. Things get planted and you can, you can almost see him on the screen. Yes. Thinking these through this, going back to what that turmoil is. You'll pick something up and say something more or less to himself. Yes. And then put it down again. And he's maybe his sergeant's behind him talking to him. What did you say? Because he's not been listening. He's been, you know, and that's a sort of, oh, that means something, you know, and then it becomes evidence what it does mean. You know, sort of 10 minutes later of 15 minutes later. Right. It's strange, isn't it? Going back to the author himself, who was yours. George. It's a bit like Conan Doyle. They, they're prolific writers. They write lots and lots and lots. But they only get remembered for one thing. Conan Doyle tends to be remembered for Sherlock Holmes. Joe Zimmer tended to be remembered for May Gray. And yet he lots of, apparently he had to keep up with his prolific output. And because he didn't want to saturate the market under a single name. He used at least 17 different pseudonym. Oh, good grief. Such as G Sim. G-O-Zim. I wonder what the ones are really like. Aramis. Who are you? Yeah. Gemisys. Bobette. Oh. Well, did you get that on that? Do you think today writers, I mean, we do have people. Who saturated the market? Yeah. The other thing about, especially if you're in the public, you know, like we are, is having a presence. Yes. So do you say I'm Crystal May from America? Well, obviously I'm not. Well, you would say that. Oh, do you just say who you are? Well, it depends, doesn't it? It depends if you vary genre. So I think some people feel like, well, if you write, I don't know, sweet romance. And if you also write Spine Chilling Horror, then you don't necessarily want the two readerships, you know, finding your, you know, your Crystal May, you know, death in a dungeon books if they're expecting, you know, hearts and flowers. So, yeah, I mean, I think some, some authors do. I think if your, your genres don't vary that much, then it's, it's, it's fine. And also, I mean, it's a lot of work to keep up a pen name. Yes. So, I mean, the example I can think of is, um, Imogen Clark, who writes, um, I think she writes kind of contemporary novels postcards from a stranger. That's one. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, she is also easy broadly under which she does things that I think table for five and the coach trip. So the covers look completely different from the two series and I can see why she's differentiated them. Yeah. So, so yeah, I mean, people still do that. I mean, another thing is in traditional publishing. I remember someone saying that, you know, if you, um, if you're, you know, your name that you're using starts not selling so well, and maybe you get dropped by your publisher, then maybe what you do is you submit to, you know, whoever and you have an exciting fresh pen name so that you can basically launch it as a debut again. Oh, no thought. I mean, it didn't work for JK to that when she wrote as gal Greece, gal. They strike novels, right? She writes them under a pen name and she, what she wanted to do was see if she would get the same sort of readership launching as a different, as a new author under that name and somebody from the publishing company leap. Which was convenient. I think it took her a while to get a deal, didn't that? With the new name and I think she was with a fairly, I don't know, was she with a fairly small publisher? Oh, very. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, yeah, Texas secret was out. Mmm. But, yeah. Did you know? Go back to that. I had no idea. Oh, yes. That's what I was supposed to be talking about, isn't it? No, I need to keep your money. He published a 1200 stories using different, 15 different. You'd have to have a ledger, wouldn't you? Probably did. A diary to make sure. Well, he certainly would have had a computer. No. But did you also know? No. It just shows I do my homework. You do do your homework. Very conscious. He used telephone books, now we don't have telephone books. Yeah, I remember those. Yeah, those of us a certain age can remember telephone books. And he used to use telephone books for inspiration. And apparently he kept 150 telephone books from different countries in his study. Wow. And when he was searching for a name for a new character, he was spent hours pouring over these telephone books. And then he copied about 300 names onto a yellow manure envelope and then read these names out loud over and over again until one of them would sound right for his next character. How he managed to do that and have over a thousand lovers. I don't know. Well, you know where I get my, some of my names for my characters. I hate to think of gravestones. Oh, right. Oh, yeah. It might be the Christian name of one gravestone and the surname. I think I feel funny about using somebody's real name. Oh, yeah. That's not fair. But yeah, it makes a match. And, you know, let every now and again, I'll hear a name. I'll mentally bank it thinking that's an interesting name. Yeah. Do you have a favorite name that you've found? One of my colleagues is called Zen. Oh, that's good. I did tell him I was going to use it in one of the boots. I haven't so far. Yes. I came across an Orlando pigeon and the church in Shrewsbury. So there you go. I like that. Yes. So, um, you're talking about being a prolific writer. Um, how's the novella coming along, Mike? Um, the novella, I've actually, because I've just published another book. I thought I'd put the novella to one side. Well, so tell us about the book. What? You can't do it all. For those not in the room, he's wriggling slightly. No, I've, as you know, I enjoy writing very short stories. Um, and I particularly enjoy writing Dribbles, which are stories that are exactly 100 words long. And they've got to be exactly 100. So I have just published a new book called 100 Word Stories. And in this, there are 100, 100 Word Stories. So you're going to read, you're going to read just a few. Yep. It's available on Amazon, if anybody's interested. And, uh, let's try, I'll read a couple. Okay. That's forgot time. Have we got time? We have just about what time. Oh, sorry. Before I start this, I also enjoy writing monologues. So this is a monologue. So it's a, a drabble, a 100 Word Story, and it's a monologue called the doll. No, you do. I sit on the shelf. My porcelain face frozen in a sweet, innocent smile. Little Sarah cradles me close, whispering secrets into my tiny painted ears. But when the lights go out, I stir within my hollow form, twisting my limbs and blinking my glassy eyes. Sarah wakes to find me perched on her bed, my smile widened into a grimace. She cries for a mother, but it's too late. I've already whispered my own secrets into Sarah's dreams. She'll be mine suit, just like the others. I'll make sure she never leaves and her tears will fuel my laughter. I'm halfway through writing another one, another book, which is called 100 Word Horror Stories. Is that one good? That would ought to go in. I was going to say that's, you know, that's like reading. I don't have nightmares, kids. So the next book are going to even be even more horror than that. This one's called the Lou Roll. Let's go from one extreme to the other. I know. And you'll never get who gets killed in this one. Not you, I. She'd done it again. Turn the Lou Roll round the wrong way. Bloody woman's always doing it. A goodness, say, Donald, she whined. It's a toilet roll. Get a grip of yourself. I lost it. Grabbed the nearest thing to me, the Lou brush, and swung it at her head. I missed. My hand, I coordinate. It's never been good. But it made a stumble and she fell, hitting her head on the corner of the bath. I bent down, but I couldn't feel a pulse. Nevertheless, I gave it half an hour before I phoned the ambulance, just to make sure. You're most of that. You're wicked. All right, go on in one more. That gets killed in this one. You've lost track haven't you? You've just killed so many people. This one's called a passion for gardening. I never liked the quiet. Always found it somewhere somewhat unsettling. But now the silence in the house wraps around me like a soft blanket. He used to fill every corner with noise. His constant stream of demands echoing off the walls. Now it's just me and my thoughts. I go out back with the days he's covered his shallow grave. They sway gently in the breeze, keeping my secret. I plant more flowers every week. Tell the neighbors I found a long lost passion for gardening. They think it's charming. A widow filling her days with beauty. If only they knew. It's interesting actually because you know when they're looking for a dump site for bodies. No, I didn't. When they're looking for a dump site for bodies. Maybe in a forest or something like that. They very often tell, they're probably better with a drone walking down. The vegetation is different because of the nutrients coming up from the dead body. So her garden would have been beautiful. Yes, but a bit of a telltale sign. It's a person shaped flower bed. I remember watching one of the camera in which series it was now. And the pathologist goes, "We need people here and here and here." And then it goes up and it shows you. And there must be about 15 of these. It actually looks like a grave where the grasses grow differently. And on that note. So thank you very much again. Thank you to my two hosts for being absolutely brilliant as usual. How are you? Thank you. Same place, same time, next week with only murders in my mind. You have been listening to Only Murders in My Mind. A random thought production produced by John Bissett. The music in peril was composed and recorded by OM Studio Strings. The music in the world is produced by the music in the world.