In a dimly lit apartment building, where shadowy figures come and go, a man has been killed in Georges Simenon's The Shadow Puppet.
On the dimly lit Place des Vosges, Maigret hears the sound of a woman in distress. But this is no crime; she is giving birth in a room above. The lights of the apartments across the courtyard flicker, and Maigret sees shadowy figures at the windows. Behind one is a dead man and an empty safe. As one life begins, another has come to a dark end.
In this installment of the Maigret series, the Parisian detective uncovers a tragic story of desperate lives, unhappy families, addiction, and a terrible, fatal greed. Georges Simenon (1903–1989) was born in Liège, Belgium. An intrepid traveler with a profound interest in people, Simenon strove on and off the page to understand-and not to judge-the human condition in all its shades. His books 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.
Ros Schwartz is an award-winning translator of French literature. Acclaimed for her new version of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince (published in 2010), she has over one hundred fiction and nonfiction titles to her name, including multiple by Georges Simenon. In 2009, the French government named her a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters, and in 2017 she was awarded the John Sykes Memorial Prize for Excellence by the Institute of Translation and Interpreting.
