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's Failure
Maigret's Failure
"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 Guardian
When a childhood bully reappears in Maigret's life, he struggles to put aside his own feelings and carry out his duties as an investigator.
When Ferdinand Fumal, a wealthy butcher and political influencer, starts receiving anonymous death threats, he fears for his life, and Maigret is ordered to his protection. But upon meeting the man, Maigret realizes that Fumal was among the childhood bullies who tormented him as a boy. Maigret's instinct is to pawn the job off on another officer--until Fumal turns up the next morning brutally slain that is. Racked with guilt, Maigret finds himself being blamed for the murder, and so must go about the agonizing task of bringing the murdered butcher's killer to justice.