Showing results by author "Georges Simenon" in All Categories

'You see, I mainly work at night. I've ended up getting to know everybody. They're used to me in Pigalle, I exchange a few words with this person or that person. I go into the bars and cabarets where they give me a quarter bottle of Vichy without waiting for me to order anything.' An anonymous tip-off regarding the death of a restaurant owner sends Maigret into the world of Parisian nightlife, a notorious criminal gang and a man known as 'the Flea'. This novel has been pubished in a previous translation as Maigret and the Flea.

Maurice Denham is the famous French detective Maigret, and Michael Gough is his creator, Georges Simenon, in five classic radio dramatisations. First broadcast in 1976, the episodes are 'Maigret Goes Home', 'Maigret in Montmartre', 'Maigret Has Scruples', 'Maigret in Society' and 'Maigret Sets a Trap'. Maigret is an enduringly popular character, first appearing in print in 1931 and most recently filmed for television starring Rowan Atkinson.

The attempted suicide of a countess and the death of a billionaire in the same luxury Paris hotel send Maigret to the Riviera and then to Switzerland, as he searches for the truth amid the glittering world of the super rich. Eyes half closed, head tilted against the back of his seat, he seemed not to be thinking, as the plane flew over a thick carpet of bright clouds. In reality, he was making an effort to bring names and shadowy figures to life, names and figures that even this morning had been as unknown to him as the inhabitants of another planet.

That shoeless foot looked incongruous lying on the pavement next to another foot encased in a shoe made of black kid leather. It was naked, private.... It was Maigret who retrieved the other shoe, which lay by the kerb six or seven metres away. A series of strange phone calls leads Inspector Maigret through the Paris streets towards a man out of his depth amid a network of merciless criminals.

Maigret finds himself back on the Rue des Acacias just 10 days after cracking another case there. This time it is the murder of a criminal Maigret has known for over 20 years and one he always suspected was behind a string of jewellery robberies in the city. Maigret's patience is tested as he eliminates neighbour by neighbour in his hunt for the murderer.

When a man’s headless body is discovered in Paris’ Saint-Martin Canal, Maigret is quick to answer the call. It is in this very neighborhood that he meets a strangely taciturn woman who runs a cafe. Her husband is away on a trip - or so she says. As is often the case, Maigret soon learns that there is more to the story than meets the eye.

Inspector Maigret must untangle the web of lies left behind by a murdered man whose family didn't know him as well as they thought. When a man is found stabbed to death in an alley off Boulevard Saint-Martin, his identity card shows a workplace that had gone out of business three years earlier. As far as his wife knew, he still worked there, and she insists that the shoes and a tie he was wearing when he was killed 'couldn't be his'.

In book 39 of the new Penguin Maigret, the inspector learns that his hapless colleague Lognon is being menaced by some notorious American mobsters, and he makes it his mission to bring them to justice - despite threatening warnings that he is out of his depth. This story has been published in a previous translation as Inspector Maigret and the Killers.

During an undercover case Inspector Lognon is shot in a room he was sharing with a beautiful woman who has since disappeared. Inspector Maigret retraces Lognon's secretive last few days and is drawn into the darker side of the art world.

During a quiet spell in June, Maigret, is called to investigate the disappearance of a reputable businessman. When a body is discovered near the famous Père Lachaise cemetery, Maigret struggles to find any clues to the perpetrator and loses his temper when his own reputation is threatened by the case.

When a self-made man appeals to Maigret for protection at his lavish home, a years-old grudge from the past resurfaces and the inspector finds himself questioning his own motives. Conflict rather than harmony probably reigned in eight out of 10 of the still magnificent houses that surrounded the park. But he had rarely had the opportunity to breath such a strained atmosphere as the one between these walls.

A brilliant new translation of one of Simenon's best loved masterpieces. 'A certain furtive, almost shameful emotion...disturbed him whenever he saw a train go by, a night train especially, its blinds drawn down on the mystery of its passengers.' Kees Popinga is a respectable Dutch citizen and family man. Then he discovers that his boss has bankrupted the shipping firm he works for - and something snaps.

A new translation of Georges Simenon's devastating novel 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.

Inspector Maigret is meant to be taking a holiday, but he can't resist following the development of his colleague Janvier's case in the papers - and playing a few tricks on the way. Standing at the window in the middle of the morning, vaguely observing the comings and goings in the street, he had a feeling that reminded him of certain days in his childhood, when his mother was still alive and he was off school because he had the flu or it was the end of term. It was the feeling of finding out what went on when he wasn't there.

What else did they have to do with their days? They ambled around casually. From time to time, they paused, not because they were out of breath but to admire a tree, a house, the play of light and shadow, or a face. While taking a much-needed rest cure in Vichy with his wife, Maigret feels compelled to help with a local investigation, unravelling the secrets of the spa town's elegant inhabitants.

A new translation of Simenon's tense novel, audiobook fifteen in the Maigret series. "He recalled his travelling companion's agitated sleep - was it really sleep? - his sighs and his sobbing. Then the two dangling legs, the patent-leather shoes and hand-knitted socks... An insipid face. Glazed eyes. And Maigret was not surprised to see a grey beard eating into his cheeks...."

Exiled from Paris, Maigret discovers some disturbing secrets in a sleepy coastal town in this new translation. 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 metres, he stopped to catch his breath. The front door of the house had been left open.

Maigret's old colleague becomes an unexpected rival in book 24 of the new Penguin Maigret series. In everyone's eyes, even the old ladies hiding behind their quivering curtains, even the kids just now who had turned to stare after they had passed him, he was the intruder, the undesirable. No, worse, he was fundamentally untrustworthy, some stranger who had just turned up from who knew where to do who knew what.

The death of a homeless man in a condemned building in Les Halles leads Maigret on the trail of the vagrant's mysterious past and an event that happened years ago in the close-knit community of Montmartre.

'Past acquaintances resurface in the sun-drenched south of France in this new translation.' The palm trees around the railway station were motionless, fixed in a Saharan sun.... It really felt as if they were stepping into another world, and they were embarrassed to be entering it in the dark clothes that had been suited to the rainy streets of Paris the evening before.