Prewar Paris - where buses still sported outside platforms and every neighborhood its own bistro, policemen took time for human problems, and car fumes hadn't yet smothered the smell of chestnut blossoms! Paris serves as the setting for these seventeen short stories, featuring Simenon's legendary Jules Maigret. Here the Chief Inspector goes about his business in a variety of settings and circumstances, revealing much about his life and his career not found elsewhere. We are even given the chance to see Maigret in retirement from the Quai des Orfevres and to see him indulge in some freelance sleuthing. This volume, along with "Maigret's Christmas," completes the collection of Simenon's short detective fiction and adds many fascinating titles to the Maigret mosaic. The stories are: 1. Maigret's Pipe, 2. Death Penalty, 3. Mr Monday, 4. The Open Window, 5. Madame Maigret's Admirer, 6. The Mysterious Affair in the Boulevard Beaumarchais, 7. Two Bodies on a Barge, 8. Death of a Woodlander, 9. In the Rue Pigalle, 10. Maigret's Mistake, 11. The Old Lady of Bayeux, 12. Stan the Killer, 13. The Drowned Men's Inn, 14. At the Etoile du Nord, 15. Mademoiselle Berthe and her Lover, 16. The Three Daughters of the Lawyer, and 17. Storm in the Channel. Librarian's note: this entry is for the collection, "Maigret's Pipe: Seventeen Stories." Entries for each of the individual stories by the author, including the title story, can be found elsewhere on Goodreads. All Maigret short stories can be found by searching for "a Maigret Short Story."
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.
