As usual, there are things at the end that you weren't privy to so you might have suspected who the culprit was, but you couldn't have solved the entire mystery yourself, but then, what the heck. You've just spent a few hours with Inspector Maigret -- drinking brandy and refreshing white wine, eating, walking on the towpath along the Seine, and it was good fun. ( )

This novella was originally published together with La pipe de Maigret in 1947, as the first in the series to be issued by Simenon's new publisher, Presses de la Cité. It was also the last Maigret story before Simenon moved to the US.

As in some of the 1939 short stories, this is set a couple of years after Maigret's long-postponed retirement to his country cottage in Meung-sur-Loire. He's starting to get a little bored with angling and gardening, and it doesn't take him long to agree when a distinguished elderly lady turns up on his doorstep to ask for help in clearing up the mystery of her granddaughter's death. He soon finds himself in a classic Maigret setting — a decayed fishermen's inn on the upper Seine — extracting information about the dark secrets of the upper bourgeoisie from servants, lock-keepers and poachers, and is surprised to be identified as a high-school classmate by the old lady's son-in-law, now a business tycoon.

It's a classic Maigret investigation, where he doesn't so much "solve" the mystery as rattle the cupboards until a skeleton falls out. Nothing very sophisticated, but some interesting twists due to Maigret's nebulous not-quite-official status. ( )

Another solid Maigret. Family secrets, the Seine, small towns near Paris, the whole bit. ( )

Maigret gets angry translated from Maigret se fache by Ros Schwartz is the book I am reading on this morning's 0630. During my train journey Maigret is on one too: 'The train. He was hot. He sat in his corner puffing on his pipe. The grass on the embankments was yellow, the little stations with their tubs of flowers flashed past' (Penguin, 2015, page 12). Simenon writes so effortlessly and clearly, setting scenes in few words. There is some Camus about him. He comes out of retirement 'Perhaps because of the Colorado beetles' (page 13) while Camus killed the Arab perhaps because if the heat. I remember posters on doctor's surgeries warning people about Colorado beetles, little stripey things imported from foreign parts. That was in the 1950s. Maigret se fache was first published in 1947. Maigret solves the case and enjoys coming out of retirement. A two-hour rail journey and the job is done and the book is read. It took a careful read at the end to work out some of the relationships. ( )