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Maigret and the Old People

byGeorges Simenon, Shaun Whiteside (Translator)

Inspector Maigret

‘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


The death of a beloved former ambassador unearths disturbing truths in this classic novel featuring Simenon's literary legend

‘He had seldom been so perplexed by human beings. Would a psychiatrist, a teacher or a novelist … have been better placed to understand characters who had suddenly materialized from another century?’


The violent death of a distinguished former ambassador, the Comte de Saint-Hilaire – an old man without political secrets or enemies – confounds Inspector Maigret, until a bundle of letters promises to uncover the tragic truth.


'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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