Description

‘The new crime and espionage series from Penguin Classics makes for a mouth-watering prospect’ Daily Telegraph

A baffling case. A mysterious inheritance.

It starts when a man’s arm is fished out of Paris’s Canal Saint-Martin. Then the rest of the body is retrieved – apart from the head. Inspector Maigret is determined to unearth the truth behind this disturbing murder. When he meets the strangely taciturn owner of a shabby local bistro, Madame Calas, who says her husband is away, the pieces start to fall into place. But, as the dogged, laconic detective discovers, nothing in this tangled case is as it seems.

Publisher Review

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 * 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. * Guardian * One of Simenon's masterpieces ... Simenon's subject is how people who are pushed to the edge push themselves over it; the force of the sleuthing is that of psychoanalysis, not police interrogation. -- Adam Gopnik * The New Yorker *