Georges Simenon Books In Order

Inspector Maigret Books In Publication Order

  1. Maigret and the Enigmatic Lett / Pietr the Latvian (1931)
  2. Maigret Meets a Milord / The Carter of ‘La Providence’ (1931)
  3. The Death of Monsieur Gallet / The Late Monsieur Gallet / Maigret Stonewalled (1931)
  4. The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien / The Crime of Inspector Maigret / Maigret and the Hundred Gibbets (1931)
  5. A Battle of Nerves/ A Man’s Head (1931)
  6. The Yellow Dog / Maigret and the Concarneau Murders (1931)
  7. Maigret at the Crossroads / The Night at the Crossroads (1931)
  8. Maigret in Holland/ A Crime in Holland (1931)
  9. The Sailors’ Rendezvous / Maigret Answers a Plea / The Grand Banks Cafe (1931)
  10. The Dancer at the Gai-Moulin / Maigret At the Gai-Moulin (1931)
  11. Maigret and the Tavern by the Seine / The Two-Penny Bar (1931)
  12. The Shadow Puppet / Maigret Mystified (1932)
  13. Maigret Goes Home / The Saint-Fiacre Affair / Maigret on Home Ground / Maigret and the Countess (1932)
  14. Maigret and the Flemish Shop / The Flemish House (1932)
  15. Maigret and the Death of a Harbor-Master / Misty Harbour / Maigret and Monsieur Labbe (1932)
  16. The Madman of Bergerac (1932)
  17. Liberty Bar / Maigret on the Riviera (1932)
  18. Lock No. 1 / The Lock at Charenton (1933)
  19. Maigret / Maigret Returns (1934)
  20. The Cellars of the Majestic / Maigret and the Hotel Majestic (1942)
  21. The Judge’s House / Maigret in Exile (1942)
  22. Maigret and the Spinster / Cécile is Dead (1942)
  23. Maigret and the Fortuneteller / To Any Lengths / Signed, Picpus (1944)
  24. Félicie / Maigret and the Toy Village (1944)
  25. Inspector Cadaver / Maigret’s Rival (1944)
  26. Maigret Gets Angry / Maigret in Retirement (1947)
  27. Maigret in New York / Maigret in New York’s Underworld (1947)
  28. Maigret’s Holiday / A Summer Holiday / No Vacation for Maigret (1948)
  29. Maigret’s Dead Man / Maigret’s Special Murder (1948)
  30. Maigret’s First Case (1949)
  31. My Friend Maigret / The Methods of Maigret (1949)
  32. Maigret at the Coroner’s / Maigret and the Coroner (1949)
  33. Maigret and the Old Lady (1950)
  34. Madame Maigret’s Own Case / The Friend of Madame Maigret / Madame Maigret’s Friend (1950)
  35. Maigret’s Memoirs (1951)
  36. Maigret in Montmartre / Maigret and the Strangled Stripper / Maigret at Picratt’s (1951)
  37. Maigret Takes a Room / Maigret Rents a Room (1951)
  38. Maigret and the Burglar’s Wife / Maigret and the Tall Woman (1951)
  39. Maigret and the Gangsters / Inspector Maigret and the Killers / Maigret, Lognon and the Gangsters (1952)
  40. Maigret’s Revolver (1952)
  41. Maigret Sits it Out (1952)
  42. Maigret and the Man on the Bench / Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard (1953)
  43. Maigret Afraid / Maigret Is Afraid (1953)
  44. Maigret’s Mistake (1953)
  45. Maigret Goes to School (1954)
  46. Maigret and the Minister (1954)
  47. Maigret and the Dead Girl / Maigret and the Young Girl (1954)
  48. Maigret and the Calame Report / Maigret and the Minister (1955)
  49. Maigret and the Headless Corpse (1955)
  50. Maigret Sets a Trap (1955)
  51. Maigret’s Failure (1956)
  52. Maigret Enjoys Himself / Maigret’s Little Joke / None of Maigret’s Business (1957)
  53. Maigret Travels / Maigret and the Millionaires (1958)
  54. Maigret Has Scruples / Maigret’s Doubts (1958)
  55. Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses (1959)
  56. Maigret’s Secret / Maigret Has Doubts (1959)
  57. Maigret in Court (1960)
  58. Maigret and the Old People / Maigret in Society (1960)
  59. Maigret and the Idle Burglar / Maigret and the Lazy Burglar (1961)
  60. Maigret and the Black Sheep / Maigret and the Good People of Montparnasse (1962)
  61. Maigret and the Saturday Caller (1962)
  62. Maigret and the Tramp / Maigret and the Dosser / Maigret and the Bum (1963)
  63. Maigret’s Fury / Maigret Loses His Temper / Maigret’s Anger (1963)
  64. Maigret and the Ghost / Maigret and the Apparition (1964)
  65. Maigret on the Defensive / Maigret Holds His Own / Maigret Defends Himself (1964)
  66. Maigret Bides His Time / The Patience of Maigret / Maigret’s Patience (1965)
  67. Maigret and the Nahour Case (1966)
  68. Maigret and the Pickpocket / Maigret’s Pickpocket (1967)
  69. Maigret in Vichy / Maigret Takes the Waters (1968)
  70. Maigret Hesitates (1968)
  71. Maigret’s Boyhood Friend / Maigret’s Childhood Friend (1968)
  72. Maigret and the Killer (1969)
  73. Maigret and the Wine Merchant (1970)
  74. Maigret and the Madwoman / Maigret’s Madwoman (1970)
  75. Maigret and the Loner (1971)
  76. Maigret and the Informer / Maigret and the Flea (1972)
  77. Maigret and Monsieur Charles (1973)

Inspector Maigret Short Story Collections In Publication Order

  1. Maigret’s Pipe: Seventeen Stories (1945)
  2. Maigret’s Christmas (1976)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. The Girl with a Squint (1931)
  2. The Engagement (1933)
  3. Tropic Moon (1933)
  4. The Window Over the Way (1933)
  5. The Lodger (1934)
  6. The Long Exile (1935)
  7. Donadieu’s Will (1936)
  8. The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (1938)
  9. Girl In Waiting (1938)
  10. Three Crimes (1938)
  11. The Strangers in the House (1940)
  12. The Widow (1942)
  13. The Truth About Bebe Donge (1942)
  14. Across the Street (1942)
  15. The Suspect (1944)
  16. Monsieur Monde Vanishes (1945)
  17. Three Bedrooms in Manhattan (1946)
  18. Act of Passion (1946)
  19. The Mahé Circle (1946)
  20. Death of a Nobody (1947)
  21. Pedigree (1948)
  22. The Snow Was Dirty (1948)
  23. Magnet of Doom (1948)
  24. The Bottom Of The Bottle (1949)
  25. Four Days in a Lifetime (1949)
  26. The Pitards (1949)
  27. Strange Inheritance (1950)
  28. The Heart of a Man (1950)
  29. A New Lease On Life (1951)
  30. The Burgomaster of Furnes (1952)
  31. Escape in Vain (1952)
  32. Havoc by Accident (1952)
  33. On the danger line (1952)
  34. Belle (1952)
  35. In Two Latitudes (1952)
  36. The Trial of Bebe Donge (1952)
  37. Dirty Snow (1953)
  38. Red Lights (1953)
  39. The Iron Staircase (1953)
  40. The Watchmaker of Everton (1954)
  41. The Clockmaker (1954)
  42. Big Bob (1954)
  43. The Accomplices (1955)
  44. The Rules of the Game (1955)
  45. The Burial of Monsieur Bouvet (1955)
  46. The Fugitive (1955)
  47. A Sense of Guilt (1955)
  48. The Little Man From Archangel (1956)
  49. The Stowaway (1957)
  50. Sunday (1958)
  51. The President (1958)
  52. The Son (1958)
  53. The Widower (1959)
  54. The Grandmother (1959)
  55. The Negro (1959)
  56. Young Cardinaud (1959)
  57. The Blue Room (1960)
  58. Betty (1960)
  59. Justice (1960)
  60. The Family Lie (1960)
  61. The Train (1961)
  62. Striptease (1961)
  63. Poisoned Relations (1961)
  64. The hatter’s ghosts (1961)
  65. The Door (1962)
  66. The House on Quai Notre Dame (1962)
  67. The Others (1962)
  68. The Bells of Bicetre (1963)
  69. The Magician (1963)
  70. Inquest on Bouvet (1963)
  71. The Man With the Little Dog (1964)
  72. The Venice Train (1965)
  73. The Survivors (1965)
  74. Venice Train (1965)
  75. Black Rain (1965)
  76. Ticket of Leave (1965)
  77. The Cat (1966)
  78. The Old Man Dies (1966)
  79. Old Man Dies (1966)
  80. The Mouse (1966)
  81. Fate of the Malous (1966)
  82. The Little Saint (1967)
  83. The Brothers Rico (1967)
  84. The Reckoning (1967)
  85. The neighbours (1968)
  86. The Prison (1968)
  87. The Premier (1968)
  88. The confessional. (1968)
  89. The Patient (1968)
  90. The Witnesses (1968)
  91. Uncle Charles Has Locked Himself in (1969)
  92. Uncle Charles (1969)
  93. November (1970)
  94. The Rich Man (1970)
  95. Enigmas (1970)
  96. The Glass Cage (1971)
  97. The Innocents (1972)
  98. The Disappearance Of Odile (1972)
  99. Magician (1974)
  100. The Girl in His Past (1976)
  101. The Nightclub (1977)
  102. The White Horse Inn (1979)
  103. The Little Doctor (1981)
  104. The Outlaw (1987)
  105. The Murderer (2013)
  106. The Hand (2016)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. Simenon’s Paris (1970)
  2. When I Was Old (1971)
  3. Letter to My Mother (1976)
  4. Intimate Memoirs: Including Marie-Jo’s Book (1981)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. City Sleuths and Tough Guys (1989)

Inspector Maigret Book Covers

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Georges Simenon Books Overview

Maigret Meets a Milord / The Carter of ‘La Providence’

One rainy night, a canal worker stumbles across the strangled body of Mary Lampson in a stable near Lock 14. The dead woman’s husband seems unmoved by her death and is curt and unhelpful when Maigret interviews him aboard his yacht. But gradually Maigret is able to piece together their story a sordid tale of whisky fuelled orgies and nomadic life on the canals. Can the answer to this crime be found aboard the yacht? Or is the murderer among the bargees, carters and lock keepers who work the canal? In Lock 14, Simenon plunges Maigret into the unfamiliar canal world of shabby bars and shadowy towpaths, drawing together the strands of a tragic case of lost identity.

A Battle of Nerves/ A Man’s Head

Mystery legend Georges Simenon comes to Penguin with classic works in celebration of the iconic Inspector Maigret’s 75th anniversary

One of the world s most successful crime writers, Georges Simenon has thrilled mystery lovers around the world since 1931 with his matchless creation Inspector Maigret. Seventy five years later, the incomparable Maigret mysteries make their Penguin debut with three of his most compelling cases.

Set in the oppressively squalid streets of Paris, A Man s Head features Simenon s famed detective as he tracks a killer on the run, while the writer s sharp prose evokes the atmosphere of Parisian luxury hotels, seedy bars, and dark alleys.

The Yellow Dog / Maigret and the Concarneau Murders

The small French town of Concarneau is a summer resort. In winter it becomes the deserted, rainswept scene for a series of murder attempts that attract the interest of Maigret. While his assistant Leroy uses ‘science’ and ‘deductions’ to trace the murderer, Maigret’s instincts unerringly guide him to the real killer past a labyrinth of fascinating characters: a paranoid failed medical doctor turned real estate shark; a passive, working class waitress whose heart secretly burns a torch of passion; an aristocratic politician who pressures Maigret to ‘make some arrests’; and a snarling stray dog that knows the murderer’s real identity.

Maigret in Holland/ A Crime in Holland

On his latest case, Maigret finds himself in the town of Delfzijl investigating the murder of a teacher. He is presented with two clues a sailor’s cap in the bathtub and a Manila cigar butt and a gaggle of suspects, including a flirtatious farmer’s daughter, an angry lawyer, a larcenous ship owner, an unaccountably frightened cadet, and a pompous criminologist with a revolver. The Inspector, in turn, is preoccupied with a suspicious pathway lit by a lighthouse beam, which leads him to wonder if this is the kind of spot where secret lovers might be discovered…
Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon.

The Dancer at the Gai-Moulin / Maigret At the Gai-Moulin

It’s closing time at the Gai Moulin, and Jean Chabot and Ren 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.

Maigret and the Tavern by the Seine / The Two-Penny Bar

One of the world’s most successful crime writers, Georges Simenon has thrilled mystery lovers around the world since 1931 with his matchless creation Inspector Maigret. In The Bar on the Seine, Maigret must visit a prisoner he arrested and bear the news that his reprieve has been refused and he will be executed at dawn. But when the condemned man tells Maigret a story, his investigations lead him to the Guinguette a Deux Sous, a bar by the River Seine, and into the seamy underside of bourgeois Parisian life.

Maigret Goes Home / The Saint-Fiacre Affair / Maigret on Home Ground / Maigret and the Countess

Simenon spins a masterful tale of aristocrats fallen on hard times and of a profligate son who in the final hour finds unexpected strength of character, regaining the dignity and the nobility of his ancestors.

The Madman of Bergerac

One of the world’s most successful crime writers, Georges Simenon has thrilled mystery lovers around the world since 1931 with his matchless creation Inspector Maigret. In The Madman of Bergerac, Maigret gets caught up in an investigation in a provincial French town terrorized by a maniacal murderer only after being shot following a man who has mysteriously jumped off a moving train. The Madman of Bergerac captures the obsessive snobbery and hypocrisy of small town bourgeoisie.

The Cellars of the Majestic / Maigret and the Hotel Majestic

Penguin delivers two more vintage Inspector Maigret novels by the legendary mystery author

In The Hotel Majestic, Maigret investigates the murder of Mrs. Clark, the wife of a wealthy American industrialist, whose strangled body is found in the baseme*nt of an upscale hotel near the Champs lys es. Maigret’s inquiries take him from the endless corridors of the Hotel Majestic to the countryside of the Bois de Boulogne and sun drenched Cannes, into a world of prostitution, drug addiction, and blackmail.

Maigret and the Spinster / Cécile is Dead

A young woman who shares an apartment with an elderly aunt returns to police headquarters repeatedly to complain of strange shifts in the position of her furniture during the night. On a particularly busy day the Inspector puts her off just long enough for disaster to strike. Translated by Eileen Ellenbogen. Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon.

Inspector Cadaver / Maigret’s Rival

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.

My Friend Maigret / The Methods of Maigret

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.

Madame Maigret’s Own Case / The Friend of Madame Maigret / Madame Maigret’s Friend

When two human teeth are found in the furnace of a Flemish bookbinder, police quickly take him into custody. Blood stains are discovered on a suit in the suspect’s closet, but he denies ownership. Then, a strangely heavy suitcase found in his workshop disappears. A neighboring shoemaker is willing to talk but his story changes with successive trips to the local tavern and is discredited. Without a body, the case seems impossibly perplexing until Madame Maigret offers her help. Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon

Maigret in Montmartre / Maigret and the Strangled Stripper / Maigret at Picratt’s

A dancer in a Montmartre bar hears two men planning to murder a countess. After work she takes her story to the police. Later she retracts it. Nevertheless, both she and the countess are soon dead. Enter Jules Maigret. His famous method is based primarily on intuitive imagination. Maigret immerses himself in the ambience of the crime. ‘Well characterized…
adroitly handled.’ The New York Times

Maigret and the Burglar’s Wife / Maigret and the Tall Woman

While committing what he intends to be his last burglary, ‘Sad Freddie’ discovers something completely out of his line: the body of a dead woman, her chest covered in blood, holding a telephone in her hand. Inspector Maigret is called in to solve the crime, and after an exhaustive search, a psychological duel, a marathon interrogation, and innumerable glas*ses of Pernod, wine, cold beer, and brandy a sure sign that this is no easy case the famous French sleuth triumphs. Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon

Maigret and the Man on the Bench / Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard

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.

Maigret and the Minister

Inspector Jules Maigret differs from his English counterparts of the 1930s and 40s in that he is a respectable, bourgeois member of the police force archetypally ‘French’. In this reissued collection of dramatized short stories, Maigret and Simenon look back over four of their greatest cases.

Maigret and the Calame Report / Maigret and the Minister

Inspector Jules Maigret differs from his English counterparts of the 1930s and 40s in that he is a respectable, bourgeois member of the police force archetypally ‘French’. In this reissued collection of dramatized short stories, Maigret and Simenon look back over four of their greatest cases.

Maigret Sets a Trap

It is a hot and steamy summer, and Maigret is hatching a plan to capture a serial murderer by playing on the killer’s perverse vanity. He finally succeeds when an important clue leads him to a trio of suspects. But the three are entangled in a web of guilt and possessiveness so tight that the unraveling nearly exhausts the Inspector until, at last, he discovers the tortured motives behind the murders. Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon.

Maigret in Court

In a great courtroom drama, Maigret has to explain why he does not believe that Gaston Meurant was capable of slitting his aunt’s throat for money and smothering a small child. But in saving him from the gallows, Maigret must expose some dark secrets about Meurant’s life.

Maigret and the Saturday Caller

L onard 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 m nage trois. Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon

Maigret and the Tramp / Maigret and the Dosser / Maigret and the Bum

A homeless man is found beaten and unconscious along the banks of the Seine. Inspector Maigret must connect him to a past and a possible motive for for his attempted murder. The investigation provides Maigret with a chilling look at those who have rejected society and the small measure of justice it offers them. Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon

Maigret’s Fury / Maigret Loses His Temper / Maigret’s Anger

Inspector Maigret, after ruling out the possibility of professional murder and having his spotless reputation called into question, solves the perplexing murder of a nightclub owner who at first glance seems to have no enemies. Translated by Robert Eglesfield. Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon.

Maigret and the Ghost / Maigret and the Apparition

Maigret arrives home exhausted after cracking an especially difficult case, only to be awakened within hours by the news of a nearly successful attempt on the life of a colleague. Plainclothes detective Lagnon, known to Maigret as ‘Inspector Hopeless,’ has become involved beyond his depth in an international art fraud and is suffering the consequences. Maigret’s only clue to Lagnon’s assailant is the single word ‘apparition’ spoken by the victim as he emerges from the operating room. The apparition leads Maigret to the highest echelons of the Parisian art world and the depths of greed and cruelty.

Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon.

Maigret Bides His Time / The Patience of Maigret / Maigret’s Patience

Maigret’s longest running case involves two decades of jewelry heists, a generation of conspiracy, and the revelation of a long buried secret from World War II. Simenon could turn the simplest of romans policiers into a moving and memorable form of art. The Times London Maigret s investigation is a bittersweet elegy for the glory days of both thief and cop. Chicago Sun Times

Maigret Hesitates

Four intriguing cases from the files of the famous French detective, Jules Maigret: ‘Maigret goes to School’, ‘Maigret and the Old Lady’, ‘Maigret Hesitates‘ and ‘The Patience of Maigret’. These full cast dramatizations have been specially adapted for the radio from Simenon’s original novels.

Maigret’s Boyhood Friend / Maigret’s Childhood Friend

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.

Maigret and the Killer

Maigret, accompanying his physician on an emergency call, is drawn into one of his most stubborn cases yet. The victim, a son of a wealthy perfume manufacturer, had been enjoying an odd hobby before his death: collecting human voices with a tape recorder, often in the rougher districts of Paris. But his wallet and his tape recorder have been left untouched, so the killer’s motive is unclear. The absence of clues begins to exasperate Maigret until an anonymous letter reveals that he is dealing with no ordinary criminal. Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon.

Maigret and the Wine Merchant

Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon.

Maigret and the Madwoman / Maigret’s Madwoman

An elderly woman, convinced that an intruder is sifting through her things and following her, calls the police. But before Maigret takes the case, she is murdered.

Maigret’s Pipe: Seventeen Stories

Seventeen stories feature Simenon’s dauntless detective as he works on some baffling cases both from his base Paris police headquarters on the Quai des Ortevres and throughout the provinces.

Maigret’s Christmas

Nine short stories make up this delightful holiday themed collection, each featuring Georges Simenon’s famousdetective, 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.

The Engagement

On the outskirts of Paris, a prostitute is found murdered in a vacant lot. In a seedy apartment house nearby lives pasty, fat Mr. Hire. Mr. Hire, who earns his living through a petty postal scam, is a convicted po*rnographer, a peeping Tom, and, once a week, the unlikely star of a Parisian bowling club, where people think he works for the police. He is a faceless man of regular habits who keeps to himself and gives his neighbors the creeps. After the murder, Mr. Hire’s concierge points a finger at him: he was out late the night of the crime. The police have the suspect under 24 hour surveillance. They are only waiting for him to make the inevitable mistake and give himself away.

Except that creepy Mr. Hire is in fact an innocent man, whose only mistake is to have fallen head over heels in love with the wrong girl.

One of the most chilling and compassionate of Simenon s extraordinary psychological novels, The Engagement explores the mystery of a blameless heart in a compromised soul.

Tropic Moon

A young Frenchman, Joseph Timar, travels to Gabon carrying a letter of introduction from an influential uncle. He wants work experience; he wants to see the world. But once in the oppressive heat and glare of the equator, Timar doesn’t know what to do with himself, and no one seems inclined to help except Ad le, the hotel owner’s wife, who takes him to bed one day and rebuffs him the next, leaving him sick with desire. But then, in the course of a single night, Ad le’s husband dies and a black servant is shot, and Timar is sure that Ad le is involved. He’ll cover for the crime if she’ll do what he wants. The fix is in, but Timar can’t even begin to imagine how deep. Tropic Moon is an incomparable picture of degeneracy and corruption in a colonial outpost.

The Man Who Watched Trains Go By

Kees Popinga is an average man, a solid citizen who might enjoy a game of chess in the evening. But one night, this model husband and devoted father discovers his boss is bankrupt and that his own carefully tended life is in ruins. Before, he had watched impassively as the trains swept by; now he catches the first one out of town and soon, commits murder before the night is out. How reliable is even the most reliable man’s identity?

Three Crimes

Based on his own experiences, Georges Simenon tells of a period in his youth when he was befriended by three men. Unbeknownst to him, these three would go on to commit a series of wholly reprehensible crimes. Yet it was only by chance that these travesties inspired Simenon to become a crime writer, rather than tread the path of evil himself. One of the 20th century’s most prolific and widely read authors, Georges Simenon 1903 1989 is widely recognized as one of the most skillful and literate writers of detective fiction, famed for his Commissaire Maigret novels.

The Strangers in the House

Dirty, drunk, unloved, and unloving, Hector Loursat has been a bitter recluse for eighteen long years ever since his wife abandoned him and their newborn child to run off with another man. Once a successful lawyer, Loursat now guzzles burgundy and buries himself in books, taking little notice of his teenage daughter or the odd things going on in his vast and ever more dilapidated mansion. But one night the sound of a gunshot penetrates the padded walls of Loursat’s study, and he is forced to investigate. What he stumbles on is a murder. Soon Loursat discovers that his daughter and her friends have been leading a dangerous secret life. He finds himself strangely drawn to this group of young people, and when one of them is accused of the murder, he astonishes the world by taking up the young man s defense. In The Strangers in the House, Georges Simenon, master chronicler of the dark side of the human heart, gives us a detective story that is also a tale of an improbable redemption.

The Widow

The Widow is the story of two outcasts and their fatal encounter. One is The Widow herself, Tati. Still young, she’s never had an easy time of it, but she s not the kind to complain. Tati lives with her father in law on the family farm, putting up with his sexual attentions, working her fingers to the bone, improving the property and knowing all the time that her late husband s sister is scheming to kick her out and take the house back. The other is a killer. Just out of prison and in search of a new life, Jean meets up with Tati, who hires him as a handyman and then takes him to bed. Things are looking up, at least until Jean falls hard for the girl next door. The Widow was published in the same year as Camus The Stranger, and Andr Gide judged it the superior book. It is Georges Simenon s most powerful and disturbing exploration of the bond between death and desire.

Monsieur Monde Vanishes

Monsieur Monde is a successful middle aged businessman in Paris. One morning he walks out on his life, leaving his wife asleep in bed, leaving everything. Not long after, he surfaces on the Riviera, keeping company with drunks, who*res and pimps, with thieves and their marks. A whole new world, where he feels surprisingly at home at least for a while. Georges Simenon knew how obsession, buried for years, can come to life, and about the wreckage it leaves behind. He had a remarkable understanding of how bizarrely unaccountable people can be. And he had an almost uncanny ability to capture the look and feel of a given place and time. Monsieur Monde Vanishes is a subtle and profoundly disturbing triumph by the most popular of the twentieth century’s great writers.

Three Bedrooms in Manhattan

An actor and a divorcee meet in a deserted New York City afterhours bar. With little in common save loneliness, middle age, and a presentiment of escape, they improvise a love story. The fragility and fear that drive their experiment from moment to moment, bedroom to bedroom, transform this boy meets girl into a literary potboiler in which risk becomes salvation. Georges Simenon supreme master of the modern psychological story has been praised by writers from Ernest Hemingway to Andre Gide.

Act of Passion

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.

Pedigree

Pedigree is Georges Simenon’s longest, most unlikely, and most adventurous novel, the book that is increasingly seen to lie at the heart of his outsize achievement as a chronicler of modern self and society. In the early 1940s, Simenon began work on a memoir of his Belgian childhood. He showed the initial pages to Andr Gide, who urged him to turn them into a novel. The result was, Simenon later quipped, a book in which everything is true but nothing is accurate. Spanning the years from the beginning of the century, with its political instability and terrorist threats, to the end of the First World War in 1918, Pedigree is an epic of everyday existence in all its messy unfinished intensity and density, a story about the coming of age of a precocious and curious boy and the coming to be of the modern world.

The Snow Was Dirty

Dirty Snow, widely acknowledged as one of Simenon’s finest books, is a study of the criminal mind comparable to Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me. It tells the story of Frank, a pimp, a petty thief, and collaborator in occupied France. Through the long and unrelenting cold and darkness of a long winter Frank pursues all the possibilites of perdition until at last there is nowhere left to go. Hans Koning has described Dirty Snow as ‘one of the very few novels to come out of German occupied France that gets it exactly right.’ Simenon maps a no man’s land of the spirit in which human nature is driven to destruction and redemption, perhaps, as well by forces beyond its control.

Dirty Snow

Dirty Snow, widely acknowledged as one of Simenon’s finest books, is a study of the criminal mind comparable to Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me. It tells the story of Frank, a pimp, a petty thief, and collaborator in occupied France. Through the long and unrelenting cold and darkness of a long winter Frank pursues all the possibilites of perdition until at last there is nowhere left to go. Hans Koning has described Dirty Snow as ‘one of the very few novels to come out of German occupied France that gets it exactly right.’ Simenon maps a no man’s land of the spirit in which human nature is driven to destruction and redemption, perhaps, as well by forces beyond its control.

Red Lights

It is Friday evening before Labor Day weekend. Americans are hitting the highways in droves; the radio crackles with warnings of traffic jams and crashed cars. Steve Hogan and his wife, Nancy, have a long drive ahead from New York City to Maine, where their children are in camp. But Steve wants a drink before they go, and on the road he wants another. Soon, exploding with suppressed fury, he is heading into that dark place in himself he calls the tunnel. When Steve stops for yet another drink, Nancy has had enough. She leaves the car. On a bender now, Steve makes a friend: Sid Halligan, an escapee from Sing Sing. Steve tells Sid all about Nancy. Most men are scared, Steve thinks, but not Sid. The next day, Steve wakes up on the side of the road. His car has a flat, his money is gone, and there’s one more thing still left for him to learn about Nancy, Sid Halligan, and himself.

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