John Banville
An Inspector Calls
Pietr the Latvian
By Georges Simenon & translated by David Bellos
Penguin Classics 162pp £6.99 order from our bookshop
The Late Monsieur Gallet
By Georges Simenon & translated by Anthea Bell
Penguin Classics 176pp £6.99 order from our bookshop
The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien
By Georges Simenon & translated by Linda Coverdale
Penguin Classics 144pp £6.99 order from our bookshop
To start with, appropriately, a confession of guilt. Although there could be no greater admirer than I of Georges Simenon, I had not until now read a single one of his Maigret novels. The Simenon I know and revere is the author of such extraordinary fictions as Dirty Snow, Monsieur Monde Vanishes and The Strangers in the House. These are examples of what he called his romans durs, or ‘hard’ novels, and they represent the achievement he was most proud of, and rightly so. Yet many readers are unaware of these works; for them, Simenon is notable solely as the creator of one of the most famous, most believable, most enduring and endearing fictional sleuths, Detective Chief Inspector Jules Maigret of the Paris Flying Squad.
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