The Crime of Inspector Maigret
| Author | Georges Simenon |
|---|---|
| Original title | (Fr.) Le Pendu de Saint Pholien |
| Country | Belgium |
| Language | French |
| Series | Inspector Jules Maigret |
| Genre | Detective fiction |
| Publisher | A. Fayard |
|
Publication date
|
1931 |
| Media type | |
| Preceded by | The Death of Monsieur Gallet |
| Followed by | A Battle of Nerves |
The Crime of Inspector Maigret (other English-language titles are Maigret and the Hundred Gibbets and The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien) is a novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon. The original French-language version Le Pendu de Saint-Pholien appeared in 1931: it is one of the earliest novels by Simenon featuring the detective Jules Maigret.
In the story, Maigret follows to Bremen, Germany, a man who is behaving oddly and then commits suicide; his investigation leads him to a group of men, now having various careers, who knew each other when they were students in Liège, Belgium.
The first English translation, by Anthony Abbot, entitled The Crime of Inspector Maigret, appeared in 1932, published by Covici, Friede in New York. In 1963 a translation by Tony White, Maigret and the Hundred Gibbets, was published by Penguin Books, OCLC 2438079. A translation by Linda Coverdale, The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien, appeared in 2014, published by Penguin Classics, OCLC 861356703.
While in Brussels on police business, Maigret notices a scruffy man, who counts a large quantity of banknotes and posts them as "Printed Matter" to an address in Paris; intrigued, he follows the man by train via Amsterdam to Bremen in Germany. At the German frontier at Neuschanz, the man goes to a buffet where Maigret switches his cheap suitcase with a substitute. In a hotel room in Bremen, the man kills himself when he finds his suitcase has been switched. The original suitcase contains an old suit made in Liège: it is not the dead man's size, and analysis shows that it was once covered in blood.
At the mortuary Maigret meets Van Damme, a Belgian with an import-export business in Bremen, who seems to be interested in the dead man.
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