Georges Simenon Books

This is a riviting story. This book is in french not spanish as stated here. Could not put it down.

the author might be a very good one , but the story it self was boring

I picked up this book because all the blurbs on the jacket compared Nabb's writing to Simenon, who I adore. The comparison is a fair one-- we have the ordinary European detective and the relentlessly pedestrian situations, but something of the bite and wit that Simenon brings to every novel is missing and without that edge, the book only seems a bit bland.

M. Gobillot is a famous barrister in Paris. He has a beautiful wife who has helped him fashion his career and now, a twenty year-old mistress. In 2008, some fifty years after this book was published, the outcome crackles with misogyny and for those of us of a certain age, is perfectly predictable.
Simenon was well-known as a libertine so it's no surprise that the lawyer enjoys his mistress-and occasionally his mistress' girlfriend as well-and at the end, the inconvenient young thing ends up dead.
What redeems this book is the hero-narrator whose utterly unsentimental take on himself matches his almost bloodless telling of his feelings for wife and mistress. The coolness of this storyteller reminds us of a certain vogue in the fiction of the years after ww2. For many of us, our reaction to the narrator will be a mark of how far we've come.

Lynn Hoffman, author of bang BANG

This is a bit silly, and certainly not one of Simenon's best efforts. I was a bit disappointed in it, and couldn't recommend it. He did better elsewhere.

I have to confess, I read this book because it was an assignment in my French IV class. Being the open-minded, enthusiastic reader I am, I was excited to read my first French detective novel. (Keep in mind, this is sort of a beginner level French book.) I have now finished the book and can honestly say I think it deserves 3.5 stars out of 5. It was intersting. And it was short. It started out being pretty detailed but then Maigret, the detective and main character, decided he had done enough investigating and went after the main guy he'd been talking to the whole book. The ending was the thing that got me. When I read a detective story, I assume there will be an interesting ending that the rest of the book led up to. I found the ending to this book to be very abrupt and unsatisfying. Overall, I enjoyed reading the book and I wouldn't mind picking up another of Simenon's 350 or so books.

I am a long-time fan of Inspector Maigret, having read all of his advetures that I was able to get my hands on. I lived in France in the 1950s but over the years have lost most of my French language skills. I despaired of ever picking them back up until I remembered the deft, spare style of Georges Simenon. Not only am I enjoying the truly delectible story of Maigret in America, I am quickly relearning my lost skills. Kudos to you for making the French-language editions of popular fiction available!

I ordered this thinking it was an English translation. It's not, it's in French! It would be nice if the product information made that clear.

Frequent readers of Simenon get used to long, repititious descriptions of peeling paint. But the suspense of the stories are worth wading through some of the mndane details.

Frequent readers of Simenon get used to long, repititious descriptions of peeling paint. But the suspense of the stories are worth wading through some of the mndane details.

If one is used to and captivated by Simenon and especially his psychological thrillers this immature work though extremely popular in its day will be diappointing. On the other hand there is so much Simenon out there it is also a poor introduction to the later master and might prevent one from delving deeper or further.

I've read most of Simenon's non-Maigret novels, and this is unfortunately one of the least impressive. Clumsily plotted and over-heated without any genuinely effective characterizations; do *not* begin your reading of Simenon with this book!

This is my first foray into the Inspector Maigret books, one of eighty-eight mysteries written over the course of 42 years by Georges Simenon. Written in his native tongue, these books have been translated by others from French to English, and there are minor jolts here and there when everybody is "speaking" in English in the translation, but one character can't understand what another is saying because he is speaking in another language, yet both appear to speak in English in the dialogue. Also, the author bombards us with information, names, and details that do little else but pad the number of pages. And there's a glaring error. In the beginning and end sections of the book, it is the cold of winter, which a number of characters complain about. But in the middle, chapter 6 and 7, it is suddenly the Fourteenth of July and everybody is sweltering in the heat. Yet, the entire story takes place in a matter of days. Maigret's investigative procedure seems to be to put himself adjacent to the suspects, and because of his reputation as a crack detective, they start blathering on and on and saying things they shouldn't as he remains quiet. And the clue that solves the case is so obscure, and so particular to an uncommon human experience, that I would dare say only a miniscule number of readers would have any knowledge at all of the circumstance. Still there were eighty-eight of these stories comprising a very popular series of books and yielding a TV series and several films. So, I will withhold judgment on the Maigret books until I read a few more. But if this one is any indication, I just don't understand it. (Note: After having read a number of these stories, I new believe that this particiular Maigret book can be explained away by the premise that even Babe Ruth struck out once in a while.)