Maigret at the Crossroads

Twenty miles south of Paris they found the corpse of a Jewish diamond-merchant from Antwerp.

Nobody knew him. The body was in M. Michonnet’s car. But M. Michonnet’s car was in Carl Andersen’s garage. And Carl Andersen, a Dane, hadn’t budged under seventeen hours of interrogation. He had heard nothing: his languid sister had been locked into her bedroom all night.

Michonnet was the pompous soul of respectability injured, and at the third house by the crossroads the traffic simply came and went, in search of petrol, at the garage of the vulgar Monsieur Oscar. Nobody knew a thing.

Then the diamond-merchant’s widow was shot down in the dark at Maigret’s feet, and the chief inspector plunged into action like a wounded buffalo, as ponderous, as merciless, and as cunning.

Three other early Maigrets are appearing in Penguins with this book. They prove that Simenon, from the kick-off, was a master of character and atmosphere.