Inspector Cadaver (Inspector Maigret)

“Open any of his novels—from the outset, the magic operates: from the first paragraph you are caught in the jaws of a trap that will not release you until the full-stop at the end of the last page, and even then with the book closed, you remain dizzy and panting as you try to regain your footing in your little familiar world of which, during a reading, you suddenly glimpsed the vertiginous reverse.” —Simon Leys

It’s a rainy January, and Maigret has left Paris for the country on unofficial business—or, as he reflects, a stupid escapade. The examining magistrate’s brother-in-law is rumored to have killed his daughter’s lover, and Maigret is tasked with clearing the man’s name. Arriving in gloomy Saint-Aubin, Maigret meets with strangely little cooperation, both from the accused and from the ill-disposed townspeople. And why is Justin Cavre, aka “Cadaver,” a despised ex-police inspector turned private eye, throwing obstacles in his path?

As Maigret makes the rounds of this marshy backwater, he sees past all the obfuscation to expose a truth even more sordid than he first intuited. Featuring a cast of small-town characters with morals as gray as Saint-Aubin’s swirling fog, Inspector Cadaver is a haunting and compulsive installment in Georges Simenon’s masterful Maigret series.