About this item
When a Paris musician witnesses an altercation that may have been a murder, the young Maigret becomes embroiled in his first case. The thirty-first book in the new Penguin Maigret series. 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.
About the Author
Georges Joseph Christian Simenon (1903 - 1989) was a Belgian writer. A prolific author who published nearly 500 novels and numerous short works, Simenon is best known as the creator of the fictional detective Jules Maigret. Although he never resided in Belgium after 1922, he remained a Belgian citizen throughout his life. Simenon was one of the most prolific writers of the twentieth century, capable of writing 60 to 80 pages per day. His oeuvre includes nearly 200 novels, over 150 novellas, several autobiographical works, numerous articles, and scores of pulp novels written under more than two dozen pseudonyms. Altogether, about 550 million copies of his works have been printed. He is best known, however, for his 75 novels and 28 short stories featuring Commissaire Maigret. The first novel in the series, Pietr-le-Letton, appeared in 1931; the last one, Maigret et M. Charles, was published in 1972. The Maigret novels were translated into all major languages and several of them were turned into films and radio plays. Two television series (1960-63 and 1992-93) have been made in Great Britain. During his "American" period, Simenon reached the height of his creative powers, and several novels of those years were inspired by the context in which they were written (Trois chambres à Manhattan (1946) , Maigret à New York (1947) , Maigret se fche (1947) ) .Simenon also wrote a large number of "psychological novels", such as La neige était sale (1948) or Le fils (1957) , as well as several autobiographical works, in particular Je me souviens (1945) , Pedigree (1948) , Mémoires intimes (1981) .In 1966, Simenon was given the MWA's highest honor, the Grand Master Award. In 2005 he was nominated for the title of De Grootste Belg (The Greatest Belgian) . In the Flemish version he ended 77th place. In the Walloon version he ended 10th place.
