“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré Inspector Maigret steps in when an anonymous note to the police reports that a body has been burned in a bookbinder’s furnace An anonymous note to the police reports that a body has been burned in the furnace of a bookbinder on the Rue de Turenne. Preliminary investigations turn up suspicious details—and two human teeth of a man who’d been alive not long before. Meanwhile, Madame Maigret has had a strange experience while waiting for her dentist appointment. A woman she had often met on the bench while waiting suddenly leaves her young child in Madame Maigret’s care and disappears for over an hour, returning to take the child and vanishing without explanation. When Maigret’s investigation is blown wide open, it seems the two incidents might be related in ways no one could have predicted.

In The Friend of Madame Maigret, Simenon?s economic prose brilliantly portrays the Marais quarter of Paris and those who haunt its narrow streets as Inspector Maigret attempts to prove that a murder has actually been committed without a corpse anywhere to be found. As the investigation becomes increasingly complex, seemingly unconnected characters are drawn into the case, and Maigret begins to wonder if his wife?s earlier strange encounter with a woman and her baby may be the missing link.

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.

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. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

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

“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 A fictional autobiography of Maigret, Georges Simenon’s brilliant detective In this make-believe memoir, Maigret recounts a meeting with the author himself. The account starts with the arrival of Georges Sim, as he is called here, at the Paris Police Judiciaire to soak up atmosphere for his crime novels by dogging the footsteps of Inspector Maigret. The detective is irritated by the audacious young writer who names a character after him and argues that he oversimplifies, in his fiction, the intricate duties of the police investigating a case. Here, Maigret “sets the record straight,” telling readers how he’s different from the invention, and about his courtship and marriage to his beloved Louise. Ingeniously amusing and tender, Maigret’s Memoirs is a look inside the mind of the brilliant Maigret like never before.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré Convinced that he needs a vacation, Maigret resolves to take two weeks off—but when a scandalous murder makes headlines, he can’t help but get involved Maigret is given two weeks off work and decides to spend them in Paris with Madame Maigret, enjoying himself and avoiding police headquarters entirely. But when an interesting case arises in his absence with Inspector Janvier taking the lead, Maigret can’t resist his investigative urges. Through anonymous notes to Janvier, calls to newspaper reporters, and some creative independent sleuthing, Maigret Enjoys Himself finds our hero wrapped up in yet another murder—this time, off the clock.

In The Friend of Madame Maigret.

On the shore of the Black Sea, on the edge of the Soviet Union, a little city has a new Turkish consul. Adil Bey - alone in an alien land - has taken the job after the mysterious death of his predecessor. Receiving only suspicion and hostility, he soon becomes reliant on his secretary, Sonia, for any taste of intimacy. They begin a quiet love affair, and from his window at the consulate, he watches her and her family go about their lives in the room across the way. But this is Stalin's world before the war, and nothing is as it seems. . . Georges Simenon's most starkly political work, The People Opposite is a tour de force of slow-burn tension and existentialist meditation.

Previously published as The Bar on the Seine A forgotten crime comes to light in the Parisian summer in Georges Simenon's twisted tale. Book eleven in the new Penguin Maigret series. 'A radiant late afternoon. The sunshine almost as thick as syrup in the quiet streets of the Left Bank . . . there are days like this, when ordinary life seems heightened, when the people walking down the street, the trams and cars all seem to exist in a fairy tale.' A story told by a condemned man leads Maigret to a bar by the Seine and into the sleazy underside of respectable Parisian life. In the oppressive heat of summer, a forgotten crime comes to light. Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. This novel is a revised translation, previously published as The Bar on the Seine. '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