Most Popular Books by Georges Simenon

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

When a woman is found strangled in a stable near Lock 14, Inspector Maigret investigates, but finds her husband both unmoved and unhelpful as he follows a dark trail of whiskey-fueled orgies and a nomadic lifestyle to find the killer. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré Exiled from Paris, Maigret discovers some disturbing secrets in a sleepy coastal town “A short, sprightly man appeared in the doorway, looked left and right, and went back into the passage. A moment later, the improbable happened. The little man reappeared, bent over, clinging to a long mass that he now started dragging through the mud. It must have been heavy. After four meters, he stopped to catch his breath. The front door of the house had been left open. The sea was still twenty or thirty meters away.” Maigret has been exiled from Paris to a remote province, having offended his superiors. Out of his element, he finds himself utterly bored—until a murder case arrives.

Restored to print for the first time in more than forty years, The President was hailed by the New York Times as a “tour de force” At 82, the former premier lives in alert and suspicious retirement—self exile—on the Normandy coast, writing his anxiously anticipated memoirs and receiving visits from statesman and biographers. In his library is the self-condemning, handwritten confession of the premier’s former attaché, Chalamont, hidden between the pages of a sumptuously produced work of privately printed pornography—a confession that the premier himself had dictated and forced Chalamont to sign. Now the long-thwarted Chalamont has been summoned to form a new coalition in the wake of the government’s collapse. The premier alone possesses the secret of Chalamont’s guilt, of his true character—and has publicly vowed: “He’ll never be Premier as long as I’m alive... Nor when I’m dead, either.” Inspired by French Premier Georges Clemenceau, The President is a masterpiece of psychological suspense and a probing account of the decline of power.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré When a Paris musician witnesses an altercation that may have been a murder, the young Inspector Maigret becomes embroiled in his first case A musician walking home along the Rue Chaptal in the early hours of the morning sees a panic-stricken woman call for help from an upstairs window; moments later he hears a gun shot. He tries to go to her assistance, pushing past the man who opens the door upon his frantic knocking, but he finds himself roughly ejected from the premises. Undeterred, he heads for the nearest police station and urges Maigret to return with him and find out what has taken place. With this look into the man he once was and how he became the insightful inspector we have some to know, Simenon offers new insights into the brilliance of Maigret.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré Master novelist Georges Simenon’s critically acclaimed tale of the destructive power of lust and guilt “He felt no resentment towards Andree for biting his lip. In the context of their lovemaking, it had its place.” For Tony and Andree, there are no rules when they meet in the blue room at the Hotel des Voyageurs. Their adulterous affair is intoxicating, passionate—and dangerous. It soon turns into a nightmare from which there can be no escape. Heart-pounding and high-stakes, The Blue Room is a stylish and sensual psychological thriller that weaves a story of cruelty, reckless lust, and relentless guilt.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré Maigret stumbles upon a series of murders in Fontenay-le-Comte while visiting an old school friend On his way home from a conference, Maigret stops to visit an old school friend in Fontenay-le-Comte. A man in the same train car introduces himself and asks if Maigret has come to help solve the murder case. In fact, the man’s brother-in-law had been murdered four days earlier, followed by the murder of a local widow in the same way, a blow to the head with a pipe. While Maigret is in town, a third murder is reported. Maigret soon discovers that there are two warring factions in the town, a clear class separation, and an air of suspicion that only he can put to rest.

The extraordinarily patient Maigret cracks a most perplexing case, comme ca. For more than two decades, daring daylight jewelry store heists has plagued the Parisian inspector. When a Corsican immigrant, ex-pimp and sometime police informer, is found shot in the head in his wheelchair with his own gun, an entire generation of conspiracy begins to unravel.

When Maigret receives a visit from an old schoolmate whose mistress has been shot to death, he feels compelled to look into the case. Yet his friend is one of the suspects--along with the dead woman''s four other lovers, each unknown to the others. The basis for a public television Mystery! presentation. Translated by Eileen Ellenbogen. Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré In Simenon’s iconic first novel featuring Inspector Maigret, the laconic detective is taken from grimy bars to luxury hotels as he traces a fraudster’s true identity Inspector Jules Maigret, a taciturn detective and commissaire of the Paris Brigade Criminelle, receives notice from Interpol that a notorious conman known only as Peitr the Latvian is en route to France. Armed with a broad description and a scant few clues, Maigret plans to intercept him at the train station outside Paris. But when he arrives, he finds that there are several suspects—some living, and some dead—who meet the description uncannily well. Who is Pietr the Latvian, truly? A vagrant, a seaman, a businessman, a corpse? Russian, Norwegian, American or Latvian? In Pietr the Latvian, the iconic first novel of Simenon’s classic series that made Inspector Maigret a legendary figure in the annals of detective fiction, Maigret must use his every instinct to unravel the mystery and track down the truth.

''The father of contemporary European detective fiction'' Ann Cleeves Cars drove past along with the trucks and trams, but by now Maigret had realised that they were not important. Whatever roared by like this along the road was not part of the landscape. ... What really counted was the lock, the hooting of the tugs, the stone crusher, the barges and the cranes, the two pilots'' bars and especially the tall house where he could make out Ducrau''s red chair framed by a window. Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. This novel has been published in a previous translation as The Lock at Charenton. ''Compelling, remorseless, brilliant'' John Gray ''One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories'' Guardian ''A supreme writer . . . unforgettable vividness'' Independent

Léonard Planchon, a tense man with a harelip, goes to Maigret with an unusual problem. He wants to kill his wife, or perhaps his wife and her lover, who for two years now have been making him sleep on a cot in the dining room. He has even worked out a plan to hide their bodies in concrete. Uneasily investigating a murder that has not yet been committed, Maigret explores the bistros of Montmartre and uncovers a peculiar--and pathetic--ménage à trois. Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré When a young woman with a dark past is found dead on the streets of Paris, Inspector Maigret is on the case A young woman named Lulu, who has a history of brushes with the law and once lived on the streets of the 18th arrondissement, is found murdered in Paris. Maigret is called to the scene and soon learns that her boyfriend, a musician, has gone into hiding upon reading the news of her death. And when the Inspector learns that the young victim was pregnant, he begins to suspect the case might be more sinister than he imagined.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré A gripping mystery from Georges Simenon in which Inspector Maigret must go up against small town suspicion—and revenge In a small, seaside town in the northwest of France, the local wine dealer is wounded by a gunshot while retuning home drunk from a hotel bar. Maigret, who is heading up a mobile squad of the Paris police force, is called in by the mayor to solve the crime. But upon settling down in the hotel, Maigret quickly discovers a curious cast of characters awaits him there—and they all have something to hide. In the course of this strange case, a customs official is shot, a retired journalist is lost and found, and a vagrant is attested, but through it all Maigret has his sights set firmly in the direction of the truth, even as a strange yellow dog haunts the neighborhood. Fast-paced and wholly unpredictable, The Yellow Dog is a sharp mystery set against the cutthroat backdrop of small town politics.

“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 Maigret dismantles an intricate network of lies stretching from Paris to Nice in this page-turning mystery “Mechanically, he had put his pince-nez down on the blotter and looked at it there with his large, short-sighted eyes. It is at that moment that the strange thing happens. One of the lenses, acting as a mirror, reflected the criss-cross, hatched ink marks which had dried on the blotter and he could just make out a couple of words.” When a fortune-teller is found murdered in her apartment, Maigret must find out not only who commited the crime, but why it was predicted in a note found earlier—signed by the unknown Picpus.

A tale of aristocrats fallen on hard times and of a profligate son who, in the final hour, finds unexpected strength of character.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré When a well-liked nightclub owner turns up dead in a cemetery, Inspector Maigret must track down the killer—despite a lack of suspects. During a quiet spell in June, Maigret is called to investigate the disappearance of a reputable businessman, a nightclub owner with properties in Montmarte and on the Champs-Élysées. Things take a dark turn when the man’s body is discovered near the famous Père Lachaise cemetery. There’s no trace of the man having any enemies, and Maigret struggles to find any clues to the perpetrator—and loses his temper when his own reputation is threatened by the case. Under the heat of the Paris summer sun, in Maigret’s Anger, the inspector must find the connections he’ll need to catch a killer and preserve his good name.

Three vintage Maigret novels by legendary mystery author Georges Simenon One of the world ''s most successful crime writers, Georges Simenon has thrilled mystery lovers since 1931 with his matchless creation Inspector Maigret. In My Friend Maigret, Inspector Maigret investigates the murder of a small- time crook on a Mediterranean island. Told in Simenon''s spare, unsentimental prose, Inspector Cadaver is a haunting exploration of provincial hypocrisy and snobbery, in which Maigret encounters a rival sleuth from his past. In Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard, Simenon''s tenacious detective pieces together the life of a man who for three years lived a secret life-until he is found stabbed to death in an alleyway.

Georges Simenon''s chilling portrayal of tragic love, persecution and betrayal. ''One sensed in him neither flesh nor bone, nothing but soft, flaccid matter, so much so that his movements were hard to make out. Very red lips stood out from his orb-like face, as did the thin moustache that he curled with an iron and looked as if it had been drawn on with India ink; on his cheekbones were the symmetrical pink dots of a doll''s cheeks.'' People find Mr Hire strange, disconcerting. The tenants he shares his building with try to avoid him. He is a peeping Tom, a visitor of prostitutes, a dealer in unsavoury literature. He is also the prime suspect for a brutal murder that he did not commit. Yet Mr Hire''s innocence will not stand in the way of those looking for a scapegoat as tragedy unfolds in this quietly devastating and deeply unnerving novel. ''The romans durs are extraordinary: tough, bleak, offhandedly violent, suffused with guilt and bitterness, redolent of place . . . utterly unsentimental, frightening in the pitilessness of their gaze, yet wonderfully entertaining'' John Banville

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.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré A moving novel about the destructive power of greed starring the unrivaled Inspector Maigret “Poor Cécile! And yet she was still young. Maigret had seen her papers: barely twenty-eight years old. But it would be difficult to look more like an old maid, to move less gracefully, in spite of the care she took to be friendly and pleasant. Those black dresses that she must make for herself from bad paper patterns, that ridiculous green hat!” In the dreary suburbs of Paris, the merciless greed of a seemingly respectable woman is unearthed by her long suffering niece, and Maigret discovers the far-reaching consequences of their actions.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré Inspector Maigret loses himself in coastal luxury—and danger—in this devastating mystery set on the French Riviera “It had a smell of holidays. The previous evening, in Cannes Harbour, with the setting sun, had also had the smell of holidays, especially the Ardena, whose owner swaggered in front of two girls with gorgeous figures...” Dazzled at first by the glamour of sunny Antibes, Maigret soon finds himself immersed in the less salubrious side of the Riviera as he retraces the final steps of a local eccentric.

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.

TWO DESPERATELY LONELY, DISILLUSIONED PEOPLE MEET AT A NEW YORK BAR, SPEND THE ENTIRE NIGHT TOGETHER, AND TAKE REFUGE IN A GARISH HOTEL. THEY FALL IN LOVE BUT ARE AFRAID TO BELIEVE A NEW LIFE IS POSSIBLE. TRANSLATION OF TROIS CHAMBRES A MANHATTAN.

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.

French master detective Maigret investigates the murder of the wife of Francois-Francis and discovers many puzzling circumstances surrounding it...

For forty years Charles Alavoine has sleepwalked through his life. Growing up as a good boy in the grip of a domineering mother, he trains as a doctor, marries, opens a medical practice in a quiet country town, and settles into an existence of impeccable bourgeois conformity. And yet at unguarded moments this model family man is haunted by a sense of emptiness and futility. Then, one night, laden with Christmas presents, he meets Martine. It is time for the sleeper to awake.

A series of murders in Paris force Chief Inspector Maigret to set a trap at the risk of causing another crime.