On a tiny Mediterranean island, a rowdy fisherman is shot dead mere hours after mentioning “my friend Maigret.” The suspects are few—and the famous inspector is trapped among them.
On the tiny Mediterranean island of Porquerolles, the fisherman Marcel Pacaud has been shot dead. Hours earlier, he was overheard mentioning “my friend Maigret.” The inspector once knew Pacaud, who has a long rap sheet for pimping and violence. But that was many years ago. If Maigret's name has inspired murder, he cannot fathom why.
Stepping into Porquerolles's intoxicating atmosphere of tropical heat and perfumed air, he questions an eccentric clique of islanders. Rich or poor, young or old, French, Dutch, or British: they're all exiles from conventional society. Can Maigret solve the case before he succumbs to “porquerollitis” and joins them? In My Friend Maigret, Georges Simenon puts his mischievous twist on the closed circle mystery, crafting a mesmeric portrait of an idyll marred by evil.
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.
Shaun Whiteside is a Northern Irish translator of French, Dutch, German, and Italian literature. He has translated many works of nonfiction and novels, including Manituana and Altai, by Wu Ming; The Weekend, by Bernhard Schlink; Serotonin, by Michel Houellebecq; and Magdalena the Sinner, by Lilian Faschinger, which won the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for German translation in 1997.
