Maigret stonewalled Author:George Simenon This historic story, published in 1931 as 'M. Gallet decede,' was the very first Maigret of all. — A simple enough case...on the face of it. A commercial traveller killed in a hotel bedroom at Sancerre on the Loire. Mediocrity seemed to be the keynote of it. But a stone wall blocked Maigret's inquiries, like the stone wall surrounding 'the little... more » chateau,' where Tiburce de St Hilaire played the country gentleman.
Maigret sensed a falseness in everything - in St Hilaire's laugh, in the widow's pride, in the son's voice; above all, in Gallet's death, under a false name, from a shot that nobody heard, with his own knife plunged into his heart. It was all as false as the silver gift goods that Gallet was supposed to be travelling in Normandy.
Three other early Maigrest are appearing in Penguins with this book. They prove that Simenon, from the kick-off, was a master of character and atmosphere.« less