My Friend Maigret (Inspector Maigret)

“[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.

“One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequaled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories.” —The Guardian