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“One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequaled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories.” -- In Arizona on a study tour of America, Inspector Maigret observes a day in the life of a local coroner and becomes absorbed in a young girl’s murder On his travels through the U.S., Maigret stops in Tucson, Arizona at the guidance of his FBI friend Harry Cole, who leaves him one day to observe a coroner’s inquest. The body being examined is that of Bessie Mitchell, a young girl who died under suspicious circumstances--she spent a night drinking and driving with five young Air Force men and was found the next morning on the tracks, run over by a train. Maigret quickly becomes engrossed in the hearing and the men’s conflicting stories, leaving questions of who bears the guilt for this death and who can be trusted at all.
About the author
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.
Report
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
