Maigret, in retirement at Meung-sur-Loire, has taken to spending his late afternoon playing manille at the Grand Café in town. One of the regulars. The other players vary, including Hubert the butcher whose shop is across the way, Urbain the town mayor, Citroën the mechanic, and the blacksmith. Sometimes the café owner even played. One night after the game, news came in that the butcher had been killed. He'd had a lot of cash with him and had told everyone he was driving it over to the notary's for safekeeping. M shows no interest in the case at all, even though everyone comes to see him about it including Angèle, the 20-year-old waitress at the café, with whom several seem to be in love. Librarian's note: this short story by Simenon was first published in 1938. It was reprinted under the name, "The Men at the Grand Café" in 2021 by Penguin Random House with four others in the collection, "Death Threats and Other Stories."
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.
