New Releases by Georges Simenon

Publisher description

A young Frenchman, Joseph Timar, travels to Gabon carrying a letter of introduction from an influential uncle.

Hardworking Dutch family man Kees Popinga loses his money when the shipping firm he works for collapses. Something snaps and from the shell of a modern citizen emerges a calculating paranoiac, capable of random acts of violence - even murder.

Nine short stories make up this delightful holiday-themed collection, each featuring Georges Simenon''s famous detective, Jules Maigret. Christmas mysteries abound: an otherwise sensible little girl insists that she has seen Father Christmas, a statement alarming to her neighbors, Monsieur and Madame Maigret. Then, a choirboy helps the inspector solve a crime while he lies in bed with a cold; another boy, pursued by a criminal, ingeniously leaves a trail to help Maigret track him. Many of these stories feature observant and resourceful children, frightened yet resolute, who bring out a paternal streak in the childless Maigret. The rapport between the inspector and these youthful heroes imparts a delightful freshness to this holiday collection- a cornucopia for fans of Maigret and mysteries.

A kind, elderly lady-- meticulously groomed and showing no signs of derangement-- appeals to Inspector Maigret, frightened because someone has been moving furniture in her apartment. Nothing, however, has been stolen, and Maigret''s subordinates at Police Headquarters shrug her off as "Maigret''s madwoman." Touched by the imploring look in her eyes, Maigret promises to investigate-- but someone gets there ahead of him.

It''s closing time at the Gai Moulin, and Jean Chabot and Rene Delfrosse are planning to rob the till to pay of their debts. To their surprise, they stumble upon a dead body. What at first seems to the police an open and shut case proves more complicated when the body turns up next at the zoo, stuffed into a wicker basket. Into the puzzlement steps Maigret, who makes one of the most dramatic and colorful entrances of his career as he sorts out the tangled web of deceit. Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon.

After the death of Oscar Donadieu, a wealthy shipbuilder and tyrannical patriarch, his family begins to disintegrate, a process enchanced by the arrival of ambitious, angry Phillipe Dargens.

Inspector Maigret investigates the death of fortuneteller Mademoiselle Jeanne, a case remarkable for its wealth of unconnected suspects and fragmentary clues

On Rue de Turenne, two human teeth are found in the old furnace of a Flemish bookbinder, who is taken into custody. A neighboring shoemaker is willing to talk, but his stories vary with each trip he makes to the local tavern. The case seems impossibly perplexing until Madame Maigret leaves her kitchen to offer her husband able assistance. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Inspector Maigret shows the ways of police work to a young writer and reveals his rural upbringing, his first assignment as a bicycle messenger, and how he wooed and won Madame Maigret

The tidal regularity of life in a quiet village is broken when the local harbor-master is murdered, and Inspector Maigret must force the killer into the open by using all of his famous instincts.

Maigret must discover who killed a poverty-stricken Australian in this deft, psychologically fascinating story of men who kick over the traces--and of men who don''t.

After Inspector Maigret''s assistant Detective Lognon, loses a body, three shady Americans arrive in Paris, and Pozzo, the restaurateur from St. Louis, discovers that he is dealing with professional criminals

Police Inspector Maigret recounts the case of a man accused of the murder of his wife, and Maigret is unable to save the possibly innocent man from the guillotine

Almost anyone could have shot the ex-postmistress of Saint-André-sur-Mer. Why is Maigret there, among an odd assortment of people he has never seen before and charged with the task of digging out their deepest secrets? A secret agenda of his own draws him on.

The Murderer is set in a small town on the flat plains of Holland. Dr. Juperus, a local physician, is a man of meditative deliberation, propelled into action when he learns of his wife''s adultery with one of the town''s leading citizens. The icy calm with which Kuperus prepares methodically for murder rivals the bleak chill of his surroundings. Now, having acted, Kuperus is trapped - in the stuffy little town, behind shuttered windows, inside himself. Fearing discovery, yet craving recognition for his daring, Kuperus is caged within his own four walls. --Book jacket.

Mystery. Originally published in England as T̀he patience of Maigret'' in 1940.

For twenty years, jewelry thefts have been committed by the same gang, which Maigret has tried to unmask. The leader--he knows it without being able to prove it--is Manuel Palmari, a police informer in his spare time (which has also caused him to lose both legs following a settling of scores). Aline, his mistress, constitutes his only contact with the outside world, and she is closely watched by Maigret. However, despite this surveillance, Palmari is murdered. For Maigret, this crime offers a long-awaited opportunity to shed light on--and determine responsibility for--these infamous and unsolved jewelry thefts.

When a corpse turns up, shot by Maigret''s stolen gun, his search for the killer takes him to London to investigate one murder - and prevent another.

For a weekend, the Arbelet family stops in Pouilly, at the Hôtel du Cheval-Blanc. Maurice Arbelet is immediately seduced by the atmosphere of the inn: he will keep in his memory the image of a very pleasant place. Singular characters are found there however: Felix, the night watchman, former colonial soldier who''s become messy and cynical, an uncle of Mme Arbelet, lost for years; M. Jean, the owner of the hotel, who abuses his maids, Rose and Thérèse; and the latter''s husband, a Pole, who only shows up when he needs money. Why does Maurice Arbelet come back alone one afternoon to the Cheval-Blanc? This novel explores the hidden links two different milieus have with one another: the landlords of the inn and their employees, and the members of a middle-class family who frequent the restaurant, related to one of those employees.

The Inspector has fallen into disfavor with his Paris superiors and has been shunted to a district supervisor''s job on the northern French coast. Here, among mussel-gatherers and lobstermen, Maigret suffers depression and boredom. He is an outsider. Even the local police inspector is dull and predictable, as everything in the coastal villages appears to be. But the discovery of a corpse in the house of a retired judge returns a sense of purpose to Maigret. The Boston Globe called this "one of Simenon''s best Maigrets . . . replete with his customary irony and deft characterization".