"Maigret in Vichy" by Georges Simenon (published by Penguin Books)

Detective in troubled waters

11 June 2019 - 08.06 AM

The majority of the "Maigret" mysteries are naturally set in Paris, where the Detective Chief Inspector and his homicide squad keep order in the Departement de la Seine, but occasionally he operates in other parts of France. This can happen when he gets mixed up in an investigation by chance while on holiday or visiting a friend. Or sometimes he is directly called upon by the police in the provinces to help them out, or sometimes a crime in Paris brings him to another part of the country. One Maigret aficionado counted, and concluded that 21 of the 75 novels and 12 of the 28 short stories are in localities outside the capital.

Capital reading

Döblin’s novel of 1929 comes in a new edition in February 2019, having been translated anew from the…

21 February 2019 - 09.02 AM

Different men, different values

In his 60th "Maigret" book, Simenon wisely goes for something a little different, in that the…

06 February 2019 - 10.02 AM

How Austria-Hungary contributed to the dream factory

"It’s not enough to be Hungarian, you need to be talented too." This quote decorated the walls of…

15 January 2019 - 12.01 PM

Deadly, perhaps, but 1960s Paris is still a good place to be

There’s a comforting familiarity in settling down to the latest “Maigret”. Not unusually, this one…

07 January 2019 - 08.01 AM

Clarke misses the mark

A bit of an odd thing happened with us and John Cooper Clarke in the early 1980s. Your Budapest…

27 November 2018 - 12.11 PM

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