Summary: A good man is shot in his home and there does not seem to be any suspects.
I was first turned on to Georges Simeon’s Inspector Maigret by John Wilson during a not that long-lived Books and Culture Podcast episode. Simeon is a French mystery novelist that wrote around 500 books, short stories, or novellas. Nearly 150 of them involve Inspector Maigret. Penguin has commissioned new English translations of the whole set and they have been coming out at a very nice clip. I have read several, mostly in order from the start. I have been picking them up as they come on sale for kindle. I decided last week when I picked one up (it is still on sale as I write this) that I would go ahead and read it even if it is theoretically 58th in the series.
There is nothing about the book that really requires you to know the Inspector. And I do not think I missed too much by jumping to the middle of the series. It is brief, I read it in three not too long sittings. This is more of a psychological mystery (think Inspector Gamache rather than a whodunit like Agatha Christy or Sherlock Holmes.)
There is no point in giving the story away, but what I like about Maigret is that his gift is not being intellectually superior to everyone, but that he learns to know people, and he keeps doing the next thing. It was refreshing to read a quick mystery and a reminder that I need to be reading more fiction.
Maigret and the Good People of Montparnasse by Georges Simeon Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com AudiobookÂ
So glad to see you are reading Maigret as I strongly suspected that Simenon would be the kind of writer you could appreciate!
I thought you might be a fan Sheila. This lenght is about my limit these days. I need to read a couple more of them.