All credit to Penguin for reissuing the full Maigret series. Despite some eccentricities of editing and translation the mastery of the writing comes through. Better read the original French if you can. And for those of us who try to explore the pathways of the human mind under stress Simenon will always be the master. He does in 130 pages what others struggle to do in 500. Also worth remembering that most of his novels were not Maigrets, or even genre crime stories, and the best of his writing is to be found outside the genre.