Au Revoir, Maison de Maigret

Understandable but still sad news out of Paris:

Inspector Maigret and Inspector Clouseau are to lose their legendary,

  evil-smelling home on the banks of the Seine. The Paris Brigade Criminelle

  or “Crim” is to quit the dark and pokey headquarters at 36 Quai

  des Orfèvres that have served as its headquarters for almost 100 years for a

  hi-tech building in another part of the city.

  To lovers of police fiction, this will be the greatest crime against

  romanticism since the Metropolitan Police abandoned the original Scotland

  Yard in 1967.

  The Quai des Orfèvres, on the Ile de Cité, close to Notre Dame cathedral,

  was made famous by the 75 Maigret novels written by Georges Simenon between

  1930 and 1972. Its dark, cramped offices and lino-covered staircases,

  smelling of sweat and cigarettes, are familiar to every generation of Paris

  detectives – as well as killers and gang leaders – since 1912.

  Now the new Paris police chief, Michel Gaudin, wants the Brigade Criminelle

  to enter the 21st century. “It was no longer possible to make a case for

  staying there,” said Olivier Foll, head of the “Crim” from 1995 to 1997.

  “You just had to go to the headquarters of the FBI in Washington or to New

  Scotland Yard to grasp what was needed.”

Score one for modernity and one against history…