The Late Monsieur Gallet
Inspector Maigret #2
Georges Simenon author Anthea Bell translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd
Published:5th Dec '13
Should be back in stock very soon
Investigating the circumstances around the death of a certain Monsieur Gallet, Maigret finds that much of the man's life was a lie- the name he travelled under and even his stated profession.
Instead of the detail filling itself in and becoming clearer, it seemed to escape him. The face of the man in the ill-fitting coat misted up so that it hardly looked human. The circumstances of Monsieur Gallet's death all seem fake: the name the deceased was travelling under and his presumed profession, and more worryingly, his family's grief.
The second book in the new Penguin Maigret series: Georges Simenon's devastating tale of misfortune, betrayal and the weakness of family ties, in a new translation by Anthea Bell.
Instead of the detail filling itself in and becoming clearer, it seemed to escape him. The face of the man in the ill-fitting coat just misted up so that it hardly looked human. In theory this mental portrait was good enough, but now it was replaced by fleeting images which should have added up to one and the same man but which refused to get themselves into focus.
The circumstances of Monsieur Gallet's death all seem fake: the name the deceased was travelling under and his presumed profession, and more worryingly, his family's grief. Their haughtiness seems to hide ambiguous feelings about the hapless man. In this haunting story, Maigret discovers the appalling truth and the real crime hidden behind the surface of lies.
Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. This novel has been published in previous translations as Maigret Stonewalled and The Death of Monsieur Gallet.
'Compelling, remorseless, brilliant' John Gray
'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century' Guardian
'A supreme writer . . . unforgettable vividness' Independent
One of the greatest writers of the 20th century . . . no other writer can set up a scene as sharply and with such economy as Simenon does . . . the conjuring of a world, a place, a time, a set of characters - above all, an atmosphere -- John Banville * Financial Times *
Gem-hard soul-probes . . . not just the world's bestselling detective series, but an imperishable literary legend . . . he exposes secrets and crimes not by forensic wizardry, but by the melded powers of therapist, philosopher and confessor -- Boyd Tonkin * The Times *
Terrific...the 75 Inspector Maigret books are almost uniformly wonderful. They are not crime or even detective fiction as ordinarily understood...they are about human foibles, moral failings and compromises, set in an evocatively atmospheric Paris -- David Mills * Sunday Times *
A great writer of detail, of atmosphere -- Leïla Slimani * Financial Times *
A genius … Simenon broke all the rules -- Jake Kerridge * Daily Telegraph *
The novels brim with atmosphere, insight and intelligence . . . quite unlike anything else written before or since -- India Knight * The Times *
Exceptional… Simenon’s writing still seems fresh…one of the great pleasures is the summoning of France’s many landscapes and accompanying social milieux . . . There is also, and it’s a chief glory of the books, a whole range of different Parises, from the shiny rich to the hypocritical bourgeois middle to the struggling, furious world of the poor, desperate and professionally criminal -- John Lanchester * Times Literary Supplement *
I never read contemporary fiction–with one exception: the works of Simenon -- T.S. Eliot
One of the most important writers of our century -- Gabriel García Márquez
An astute observer of human nature, writing in a spare and vivid style -- Amor Towles
ISBN: 9780141393377
Dimensions: 198mm x 130mm x 12mm
Weight: 137g
176 pages