Simenon is, by an enormous margin, the best-sold Belgian author — and he is very well sold indeed. According to Wikipedia, he has sold between five hundred and seven hundred million books, about as much as J. K. Rowling, and he is the best-selling author who didn’t write in English. A television series based on his works was inevitable. In fact, there’s a few, but the best one is probably a British series from the early nineties starring Michael Gambon as Jules Maigret.1
In this episode, we learn that Parisian jewellers have been getting burgled for well over a decade. Maigret knows who’s behind this spree, but he cannot prove it. Then, one day, the suspect turns up murdered in his apartment. Obviously, Maigret is immediately on the case — but we are not. We already got off the ride when our suspect was still alive, and we could see him behind a chessboard.
While Maigret was trying to bring the murderer to justice, we were trying to reconstruct the position. He manages in the end, but I’m less sure about our result:2
Particularly the king’s side is very dubious3 — but royalists always are. There is no earthly way this position would ever occur, of course. White has somehow misplaced his queen’s side, while a charge of black’s light cavalry ended in catastrophe on h3.
The position is clearly ridiculous, but I think it’s just my reconstruction that’s really wrong. After all, Maigret is looking for a reason to arrest the guy and this position would be reason enough.
Realism: 2/5 I feel I cannot be too harsh to this guy. I’m sure he burgled the hell out of the Parisian jewellers, but I’m less sure he’s to be blamed for this sad spectacle. It might be my fault.
Probable winner: Black, I guess, but I’m not even sure this position comes from a game at all. Perhaps it comes form a television series and our murder victim was analysing it for his blog.
1. [Sadly, since 2023, he’s been Michael Gamboff.] ↩
2. [I’m very sure about this diagram editor, though.] ↩
3. [Not as dubious as the corpse, though.] ↩