Inspector Cadaver (Inspector Maigret)

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.
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.