Status Updates From My Friend Maigret (Penguin ...

31. My Friend Maigret. (1949) Alternative English title: The Methods of Maigret (1957).

An officer from Scotland Yard is studying Maigret’s methods when a call from an island off the Côte d’Azure sends the two men off to an isolated community to investigate its eccentric inhabitants.

Bought this 1959 Bantam edition for its cover!!

This has a really well-written portrayal of a small town in Southern France and the different people living there, their internal conflicts and dark secrets which start spilling out as the investigation continues. Reminds me of the French equivalent to the small towns in the Southwestern US where Ross Macdonald and Jim Thompson frequently set their novels, now that I think of it.

Picked up a bunch of Georges Simenon's novels about Inspector Maigret a while ago and decided to dive into them, this one has him called to a small fishing village on the Mediterranean coast to solve the murder of someone who claimed to know Maigret but he had never heard of. Perfectly captures the social dynamics and atmosphere of the Riviera in the early 1950's, and how jarring all that was to a Parisian.