A rough ride from reviewers?

Reviewers to date have plunged their darts into the neck of this beast but it is not dead. To start with, they have been careless with their facts.

Jacques Prévert did contribute to the writing it seems, though I agree it lacks sparkle, but could not be credited because he was receiving sickness benefit that barred him from paid work.

Odile Le Flem was not the wife of Henri Châtelard but his live-in mistress. That was why he could not show his face at her father’s funeral and instead had to lurk in the café round the corner where he first saw Marie. As a mistress, Odile was free to leave Henri (and Marie was free to replace her).

As to the fantasies of the characters, where Henri dreams of grass skirts in Tahiti while Odile dreams of a scent shop in Paris, they reveal inner conflicts and at the same time are intentionally banal. These people are small players in a provincial backwater, not poets or intellectuals.

The Simenon book I have not read (is life long enough to read them all?) but would by no means take it as axiomatic that his stories without a serious crime are weaker. They may not appeal to some tastes but that does not mean they are worse. The precise evocation of a milieu and the penetrating gaze into human weaknesses are still there.