This is one of my least favorite Maigret novels; the characterizations are peculiarly inept here, and the plot is just plain silly. There are far better Maigret books though, just don't start with this one!

I see two reviews here, and they're completely opposite each other! I read this book, my first and only Maigret, and I thought I was enjoying it, but correct me if I misread -- didn't the solution to the crime pop up in the final pages in the form of someone we hadn't even known existed?! That threw me completely. I read it again a few years later and could have sworn the same thing happened (that I hadn't missed a clue earlier in the book). I want to like the Maigret books, but are they all like that?

If you're curious about Simenon's unique style and his great character Maigret, this is the one to start with. More than any of the other 50 Maigrets I've read, this one epitomizes the qualities that make these books so remarkable; Maigret solves crimes, like this one, not so much by the regular procedure of detection, but by trying to understand the circumstances of the crime and the lives of the people involved. In this book, the crime becomes almost irrelevant compared to the study of character and human unhappiness.