In the lull of late summer, Maigret is told of a woman’s murder—but with no corpse, no missing person, and a dubious source for the tip-off, is there even a case to solve? During Maigret’s memorable first encounter with “La Grande Perche”—the beanpole—she’d stripped naked as he tried to arrest her. Many years later, at the tail end of a muggy summer, she brings him a tip-off about a dead body. Though initially skeptical, the inspector tracks down an intriguing suspect, a suburban dentist whose rich wife may be missing. The man is hostile and uncooperative, but is he guilty of murder? Or is La Grande Perche trying to humiliate Maigret once again? A propulsive mystery charged with Georges Simenon’s uncanny psychological insight, Maigret and the Tall Woman is equally a disquieting parable on taking nothing at face value.
Author
Georges Joseph Christian Simenon (1903 – 1989) was a Belgian writer. A prolific author who published nearly 500 novels and numerous short works, Simenon is best known as the creator of the fictional detective Jules Maigret. Although he never resided in Belgium after 1922, he remained a Belgian citizen throughout his life. Simenon was one of the most prolific writers of the twentieth century, capable of writing 60 to 80 pages per day. His oeuvre includes nearly 200 novels, over 150 novellas, several autobiographical works, numerous articles, and scores of pulp novels written under more than two dozen pseudonyms. Altogether, about 550 million copies of his works have been printed. He is best known, however, for his 75 novels and 28 short stories featuring Commissaire Maigret. The first novel in the series, Pietr-le-Letton, appeared in 1931; the last one, Maigret et M. Charles, was published in 1972. The Maigret novels were translated into all major languages and several of them were turned into films and radio plays. Two television series (1960-63 and 1992-93) have been made in Great Britain. During his "American" period, Simenon reached the height of his creative powers, and several novels of those years were inspired by the context in which they were written (Trois chambres à Manhattan (1946), Maigret à New York (1947), Maigret se fâche (1947)). Simenon also wrote a large number of "psychological novels", such as La neige était sale (1948) or Le fils (1957), as well as several autobiographical works, in particular Je me souviens (1945), Pedigree (1948), Mémoires intimes (1981). In 1966, Simenon was given the MWA's highest honor, the Grand Master Award. In 2005 he was nominated for the title of De Grootste Belg (The Greatest Belgian). In the Flemish version he ended 77th place. In the Walloon version he ended 10th place.
