Part of Series
What was the woman doing here? Why was her body found in a stable, wearing pearl earrings, a stylish bracelet and white buckskin shoes? She must have been alive when she got there because the crime had been committed after ten in the evening. But how? And why? No one had heard a thing! She had not screamed. The two carters had not woken up. If a whip had not been mislaid, the body might not have been discovered for a couple of weeks and only by chance when someone turned over the straw. These questions lead Maigret into an unfamiliar world of the navigable rivers and canals of France, with their run-down cafes, shadowy towpaths, and eccentric inhabitants. This is a recent translation of the second novel in the Inspector Maigret series - Georges Simenon's tragic tale of lost identity. The Penguin series features brilliant renderings by some of today's best translators from French to English and introduces the intrepid Inspector to a brand new audience.
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.
