'Compelling, remorseless, brilliant' John Gray

Maigret plunges into the murky Parisian underworld in book twenty-nine of the new Penguin Maigret series.

'That shoeless foot looked incongruous lying on the pavement next to another foot encased in a shoe made of black kid leather. It was naked, private . . . It was Maigret who retrieved the other shoe which lay by the kerb six or seven metres away'

A series of strange phone calls leads Inspector Maigret through the Paris streets towards a man out of his depth amid a network of merciless criminals.

This novel has been published in a previous translation as Maigret's Special Murder.

'His artistry is supreme' John Banville

'A supreme writer . . . unforgettable vividness' Independent

Georges Simenon (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.

David Coward (Translator)
David Coward is Emeritus Professor of French at the University of Leeds and has translated many books from French for Penguin Classics.