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Cécile is Dead

byGeorges Simenon, Anthea Bell (Translator)

Inspector Maigret

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‘Acute psychological insight and a distinctive, spare, atmospheric style … Simenon ought to be spoken of in the same breath as Camus, Beckett and Kafka’ Independent on Sunday

In this classic novel, a woman’s fears for her safety lead Inspector Maigret to a Paris suburb where he uncovers appalling family secrets


‘Barely twenty-eight years old. But it would be difficult to look more like an old maid, to move less gracefully…those black dresses…that ridiculous green hat!’

For six months the dowdy Cécile has been coming to the police station, desperate to convince them that someone has been breaking into her aunt’s apartment. No one takes her seriously – until Maigret unearths a story of merciless, deep-rooted greed.


'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century' Guardian


‘Gem-hard soul-probes . . . not just the world's bestselling detective series, but an imperishable literary legend’ Boyd Tonkin, The Times

'One of the greatest writers of the 20th century . . . no other writer can set up a scene as sharply and with such economy as Simenon does . . . the conjuring of a world, a place, a time, a set of characters - above all, an atmosphere

John Banville, Financial Times

About Georges Simenon

Georges Simenon was born in Liège, Belgium in 1903. An intrepid traveller with a profound interest in people, Simenon strove on and off the page to understand, rather than to judge, the human condition in all its shades. His novels include the Inspector Maigret series and a richly varied body of wider work united by its evocative power, its economy of means, and its penetrating psychological insight. He is among the most widely read writers in the global canon. He died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life.
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