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Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses

byGeorges Simenon, William Hobson (Translator)

Inspector Maigret

‘Acute psychological insight and a distinctive, spare, atmospheric style … Simenon ought to be spoken of in the same breath as Camus, Beckett and Kafka’ Independent on Sunday


Faced with a house of tight-lipped witnesses to a murder, Simenon's legendary Inspector Maigret must change his methods to uncover the truth

‘The family and the house had turned in on themselves, acquiring a hostile face in the process’

The once-wealthy Lachaume family closes ranks when one of their own is shot dead, claiming to have heard and seen nothing of the murder. This leaves Maigret – along with a troublesome new magistrate who has waded into the case – to pick his way through their shameful secrets.

'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century' Guardian


‘Gem-hard soul-probes . . . not just the world's bestselling detective series, but an imperishable literary legend’ Boyd Tonkin, The Times

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

About Georges Simenon

Georges Simenon was born in Liège, Belgium in 1903. An intrepid traveller with a profound interest in people, Simenon strove on and off the page to understand, rather than to judge, the human condition in all its shades. His novels include the Inspector Maigret series and a richly varied body of wider work united by its evocative power, its economy of means, and its penetrating psychological insight. He is among the most widely read writers in the global canon. He died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life.
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