An attempted murder in Paris is a crime close to home for Chief Superintendent Maigret as a fellow officer is gunned down in the street. The victim, Inspector Lognon, is not a member of his Crime Squad but is an old colleague and as he is rushed to hospital, Maigret gets on the case.
But what is the case? Lognon is in a coma, no-one at his station knows what he was working on or why he was in the street at night. When investigations on site reveal he was a regular late-night visitor to the nearby apartment of a young woman, who has since disappeared, some jump to the obvious conclusion. But Maigret thinks not and digs deeper, roots around the neighbours, builds a hypothesis that centres on a substantial property across the road where lives a Dutch art dealer and his attractive wife.
Police procedure proceeds impeccably, though Maigret, as ever, finds time to pop into bistros and cafes for necessary refreshments. Drawing on the work done by his inspectors in the field and intelligence gleaned from his contacts in Nice and London, Maigret probes, interrogates, and deduces.
It is classic
Simenon and Maigret with the atmospheric Paris setting, quirky characters,
economy of prose, and a complex puzzle to unravel. Done and dusted in under 160
pages. Old school!
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