Signed, Picpus

Maigret dismantles an intricate network of lies stretching from Paris to Nice in book twenty-three of the new Penguin Maigret seriesMechanically, he had put his pince-nez down on the blotter and looked at it there with his large, short-sighted eyes. It is at that moment that the strange thing happens. One of the lenses, acting as a mirror, reflected the criss-cross, hatched ink marks which had dried on the blotter and he could just make out a couple of words.

“Praise for Georges Simenon "One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories." -- The Guardian "These Maigret books are as timeless as Paris itself." -- The Washington Post "Maigret ranks with Holmes and Poirot in the pantheon of fictional detective immortals." -- People "I love reading Simenon. He makes me think of Chekhov." --William Faulkner "The greatest of all, the most genuine novelist we have had in literature." --Andr”

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
Gem-hard soul-probes . . . not just the world's bestselling detective series, but an imperishable literary legend . . . he exposes secrets and crimes not by forensic wizardry, but by the melded powers of therapist, philosopher and confessor -- Boyd Tonkin The Times
Terrific...the 75 Inspector Maigret books are almost uniformly wonderful. They are not crime or even detective fiction as ordinarily understood...they are about human foibles, moral failings and compromises, set in an evocatively atmospheric Paris -- David Mills Sunday Times
A great writer of detail, of atmosphere -- Leïla Slimani Financial Times
A genius … Simenon broke all the rules -- Jake Kerridge Daily Telegraph
The novels brim with atmosphere, insight and intelligence . . . quite unlike anything else written before or since -- India Knight The Times
Exceptional… Simenon’s writing still seems fresh…one of the great pleasures is the summoning of France’s many landscapes and accompanying social milieux . . . There is also, and it’s a chief glory of the books, a whole range of different Parises, from the shiny rich to the hypocritical bourgeois middle to the struggling, furious world of the poor, desperate and professionally criminal -- John Lanchester Times Literary Supplement
I never read contemporary fiction–with one exception: the works of Simenon -- T.S. Eliot
One of the most important writers of our century -- Gabriel García Márquez
An astute observer of human nature, writing in a spare and vivid style -- Amor Towles

Georges Simenon (Author)Georges Simenon was born in Li ge, Belgium, in 1903. He is best known in Britain as the author of the Maigret novels and his prolific output of over 400 novels and short stories have made him a household name in continental Europe. He died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life.David Coward (Translator)David Coward is Emeritus Professor of French at the University of Leeds and has translated many books from French for Penguin Classics.

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