Penguin to reissue ALL 75 Inspector Maigret Mysteries

Penguin is reissuing, in new translations, all 75 of Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret mysteries -- some of the bleakest, and best, works ever produced in the genre.

The first two are out already, including “Pietr the Latvian,” originally published in 1930, the earliest book to feature the iconic Paris police inspector.

Simenon was very prolific; in addition to his Maigret novels, he also produced 117 romans durs, or hard novels, which Luc Sante describes in a 2007 Bookforum essay as “punishing studies of human beings driven by circumstance and personality to the ends of their tethers” -- a total of 400-plus books in all.

HT Bill Gottfried