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.

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.

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

Mondays are nobody's favorite day, but when Maigret's week begins with a corpse found stabbed to death in a Parisian alley, the Inspector immediately sees a flaw. Murders are rarely committed on Mondays. That clue, along with the victim's strange recent behavior, leads Maigret to the cause of this nasty crime-and reveals the tale of a deadly marriage.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré “[My Friend Maigret] is a great vehicle for passing the dead minutes…by pondering, with Maigret, the challenges of order versus chaos, how to serve justice, if it needs serving—and an island filled with ‘nothing but phenomena.’” —The New York Times Book Review Inspector Maigret investigates the murder of a small-time crook on a Mediterranean island While Inspector Pyke of Scotland Yard is staying with Maigret to observe his methods, Maigret receives word of a murder in the Midi on the island of Porquerolles. The victim is Marcellin, a man who claims to have been Maigret’s friend but was actually a criminal whose girlfriend, a sex worker, Maigret helped out of a scrape years ago. Travelling to the island, Maigret and Pyke must solve a mystery that takes them deep into the shadowy world of art forgery and the heart of an isolated community with eccentric inhabitants—and no shortage of secrets. My Friend Maigret is a page-turning mystery set in the sun-drenched south of France about what can happen when past acquaintances resurface.

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.

Translated by Eileen Ellenbogen. "A Helen and Kurt Wolff book."