More crossroads

Back at the crossroads, I have now finished a quick (third) read of 'La Nuit du Carrefour'. I also have the benefit of a review of the ITV version from the Guardian, by a chap who must, at least, have got a bit further than I did.

It seems that in the ITV version, the story is one of police corruption, of country police on the take, with Maigret riding into town to sort it all out. Now I dare say that corruption was as much a problem for the French police as it was for those here in the UK - but it does not feature in any Maigret story that I have read, including this one. In fact, while Maigret does not get on with all his colleagues, and some of them are not sympa at all, they are all, more or less, good chaps, doing their best in sometimes difficult circumstances. Going further, I think most of the villains are good chaps too, with a fair proportion of the really bad ones being foreign, as is the case in this story, where the killer, as apposed to the common or garden thieves, is Italian. And then he kicks up a fuss about having his head chopped off. Didn't mind dishing it out, but didn't like it when it was his turn - no Gallic spirit about it at all - or even Belgic.

Maybe there is some technical reason why the story as written would not do, but I fail to see what it is. Why the adaptation needed to include so much additional material? Plus the set did not feel much like the scene turned up by streetview, on what I think is one of the route nationales in question, the D.19, at gmaps 48.573614, 2.248134. A roughly Seine valley scene which reminds me of our fens, to a lesser extent of the Thames valley at say Wallingford or Lechlade.

But most irritating was the fact that I found that, despite having read the story twice last summer, I had remembered virtually nothing of how the story played out. How almost everybody living in the three houses at the crossroads was in on it. Never mind about the nasty back story of the three widows who used to live in one of them and who gave their name to the crossroads.

A story included, incidentally, a proper Poirot style gathering of the cast at the end so that the hero can give a short lecture tying up all the loose ends in the minds of the average reader.

Perhaps the takeaway is that one should expect to be irritated by television adaptations of books that one knows and likes beforehand.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/blackadder-goes-to-crossroads.html.