Georges Simenon
Georges Joseph Christian Simenon (1903-1989) was a Belgian writer who wrote in French. He was extraordinarily prolific, publishing over 500 novels and numerous shorter works. He is best known and mostly represented here by his novels featuring the detective Jules Maigret.
Between 1931 and 1972, Simenon published 75 novels and 28 short stories featuring Commissaire Maigret. In doing so he created one of the great detective personas, worthy of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple, Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe and Travis McGee. Compared to such colleagues, Maigret is almost nondescript — he is gruff, patient, scrupulously fair, quiet, persistent, thoughtful, non-demonstrative. He has no real eccentricities, no flourishes, no quirks, no attitude other than determining what happened and who was responsible. And yet, his world and his existence in it is compelling, even addictive. Whatever issues his creator may have had with truth and good behavior, Maigret is dedicated to them in all their relative messy relationships with people and their stories and their lives.
The books do not have to be read in any particular order. Once you sample one, however, and want to try some more (inevitably), you may want to read a stretch of them in the order in which they were written. Sometimes the only clues to the passing of time in our “real” world are the technological changes mentioned in the novels. Maigret — ageless, steadfast — remains the same.
Maigret and the Tramp
Maigret and the Tramp
"One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequaled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories." --The GuardianWhen a beggar is pulled from the River Seine, having been badly beaten, Inspector Maigret must investigate the man to uncover his attacker.
While sleeping under the Pont Marie bridge, a homeless man known as Doc is viciously beaten and thrown into the River Seine to drown. A pair of bargemen manage to rescue him, and his identification reveals he was once a doctor in Mulhouse, where, coincidentally, Inspector Maigret's sister-in-law lives. Seizing on this connection, Maigret must delve into the man's personal circumstances to figure out just who might have wanted him dead--and why.
A fascinating, fast-paced story about the past lives we try to leave behind, and the ways in which they return, Maigret and the Tramp is a riveting mystery from Georges Simenon.