Simenon, Georges

The Bar on the Seine (Penguin Mysteries)

One of the world’s most successful crime writers, Georges Simenon has thrilled mystery lovers around the world since 1931 with his matchless creation Inspector Maigret. In The Bar on the Seine, Maigret must visit a prisoner he arrested and bear the news that his reprieve has been refused and he will be executed at dawn. But when the condemned man tells Maigret a story, his investigations lead him to the Guinguette à Deux Sous, a bar by the River Seine, and into the seamy underside of bourgeois Parisian life.

The Hotel Majestic (Penguin Mysteries)

Penguin delivers two more vintage Inspector Maigret novels by the legendary mystery author

In The Hotel Majestic, Maigret investigates the murder of Mrs. Clark, the wife of a wealthy American industrialist, whose strangled body is found in the basement of an upscale hotel near the Champs-Élysées. Maigret’s inquiries take him from the endless corridors of the Hotel Majestic to the countryside of the Bois de Boulogne and sun-drenched Cannes, into a world of prostitution, drug addiction, and blackmail.

Red Lights (New York Review Books Classics)

It is Friday evening before Labor Day weekend. Americans are hitting the highways in droves; the radio crackles with warnings of traffic jams and crashed cars. Steve Hogan and his wife, Nancy, have a long drive ahead—from New York City to Maine, where their children are in camp. But Steve wants a drink before they go, and on the road he wants another. Soon, exploding with suppressed fury, he is heading into that dark place in himself he calls “the tunnel.” When Steve stops for yet another drink, Nancy has had enough. She leaves the car.

On a bender now, Steve makes a friend: Sid Halligan, an escapee from Sing Sing. Steve tells Sid
all about Nancy. Most men are scared, Steve thinks, but not Sid.

The next day, Steve wakes up on the side of the road. His car has a flat, his money is gone, and there’s one more thing still left for him to learn about Nancy, Sid Halligan, and himself.

The Strangers in the House (New York Review Books Classics)

Dirty, drunk, unloved, and unloving, Hector Loursat has been a bitter recluse for eighteen long years—ever since his wife abandoned him and their newborn child to run off with another man. Once a successful lawyer, Loursat now guzzles burgundy and buries himself in books, taking little notice of his teenage daughter or the odd things going on in his vast and ever-more-dilapidated mansion. But one night the sound of a gunshot penetrates the padded walls of Loursat’s study, and he is forced to investigate. What he stumbles on is a murder.

Soon Loursat discovers that his daughter and her friends have been leading a dangerous secret life. He finds himself strangely drawn to this group of young people, and when one of them is accused of the murder, he astonishes the world by taking up the young man’s defense.

In The Strangers in the House, Georges Simenon, master chronicler of the dark side of the human heart, gives us a detective story that is also a tale of an improbable redemption.

Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard (Inspector Maigret Mysteries)

Three vintage Maigret novels by legendary mystery author Georges Simenon

One of the world ’s most successful crime writers, Georges Simenon has thrilled mystery lovers since 1931 with his matchless creation Inspector Maigret. In My Friend Maigret, Inspector Maigret investigates the murder of a small-time crook on a Mediterranean island. Told in Simenon’s spare, unsentimental prose, Inspector Cadaver is a haunting exploration of provincial hypocrisy and snobbery, in which Maigret encounters a rival sleuth from his past. In Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard, Simenon’s tenacious detective pieces together the life of a man who for three years lived a secret life—until he is found stabbed to death in an alleyway.

Dirty Snow (New York Review Books Classics)

Nineteen-year-old Frank Friedmaier lives in a country under occupation. Most people struggle to get by; Frank takes it easy in his mother's whorehouse, which caters to members of the occupying forces. But Frank is restless. He is a pimp, a thug, a petty thief, and, as Dirty Snow opens, he has just killed his first man. Through the unrelenting darkness and cold of an endless winter, Frank will pursue abjection until at last there is nowhere to go.

Hans Koning has described Dirty Snow as "one of the very few novels to come out of German-occupied France that gets it exactly right." In a study of the criminal mind that is comparable to Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me, Simenon maps a no man's land of the spirit in which human nature is driven to destruction—and redemption, perhaps, as well—by forces beyond its control.

My Friend Maigret (Inspector Maigret Mysteries)

Three vintage Maigret novels by legendary mystery author Georges Simenon

One of the world ’s most successful crime writers, Georges Simenon has thrilled mystery lovers since 1931 with his matchless creation Inspector Maigret. In My Friend Maigret, Inspector Maigret investigates the murder of a small-time crook on a Mediterranean island. Told in Simenon’s spare, unsentimental prose, Inspector Cadaver is a haunting exploration of provincial hypocrisy and snobbery, in which Maigret encounters a rival sleuth from his past. In Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard, Simenon’s tenacious detective pieces together the life of a man who for three years lived a secret life—until he is found stabbed to death in an alleyway.

Inspector Cadaver (Inspector Maigret Mysteries)

Three vintage Maigret novels by legendary mystery author Georges Simenon

One of the world ’s most successful crime writers, Georges Simenon has thrilled mystery lovers since 1931 with his matchless creation Inspector Maigret. In My Friend Maigret, Inspector Maigret investigates the murder of a small-time crook on a Mediterranean island. Told in Simenon’s spare, unsentimental prose, Inspector Cadaver is a haunting exploration of provincial hypocrisy and snobbery, in which Maigret encounters a rival sleuth from his past. In Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard, Simenon’s tenacious detective pieces together the life of a man who for three years lived a secret life—until he is found stabbed to death in an alleyway.

Lock 14 (Inspector Maigret Mysteries)

Mystery legend Georges Simenon comes to Penguin with classic works in celebration of the iconic Inspector MaigretÂ’s 75th anniversary

One of the worldÂ’s most successful crime writers, Georges Simenon has thrilled mystery lovers around the world since 1931 with his matchless creation Inspector Maigret. Seventy-five years later, the incomparable Maigret mysteries make their Penguin debut with three of his most compelling cases.

In Lock 14, Simenon plunges Maigret into the unfamiliar canal world of shabby bars and shadowy towpaths, drawing together the strands of a tragic case of lost identity.

The Madman of Bergerac

One of the world’s most successful crime writers, Georges Simenon has thrilled mystery lovers around the world since 1931 with his matchless creation Inspector Maigret. In The Madman of Bergerac, Maigret gets caught up in an investigation in a provincial French town terrorized by a maniacal murderer—only after being shot following a man who has mysteriously jumped off a moving train. The Madman of Bergerac captures the obsessive snobbery and hypocrisy of small-town bourgeoisie.