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The Second Maigret Omnibus: Maigret and the Young Girl / Maigret's Little Joke / Maigret and the Old Lady / Maigret's First Case / Maigret Takes a Room
The Second Maigret Omnibus Maigret and the Young Girl / Maigret's Little Joke / Maigret and the Old Lady / Maigret's First Case / Maigret Takes a Room Author:Georges Simenon Maigret and the Young Girl (Inspector Maigret, Bk 45) — A girl's corpse is found in Ventimiglia Square, in Paris. Maigret manages to identify the victim: Louise Laboine, from Nice. Several years earlier, when traveling by train to Paris to try her luck, she had become friends with Jeanine Armenieu, a young Lyonnaise ... more »girl. In Paris, Jeanine managed to open the doors of high society, but Louise stagnated and slowly fell into misery...
Maigret's Little Joke (Inspector Maigret, Bk 50)
"But why the Devil was she naked?"
Inspector Janvier was surely surprised to receive this clumsily scrawled question on an unsigned postcard. But he couldn't afford to ignore anything that might throw light on the mystery surrounding the discovery of the murdered woman in the doctor's consulting-rooms. This was the big chance of Janvier's career, the test of his ability as a detective, for he was conducting the investigation in place of his chief, Inspector Maigret, away on holiday.
Janvier would have been still more surprised to learn that the message came from Maigret himself. Simenon's great detective was, for once in his life, playing the "private eye". He had been obliged to take a holiday on doctor's orders, but had chosen to remain incognito in Paris with his wife. Though forbidden by her to go near the Quai des Orfevres, Maigret hadn't been able to resist the lure of solving this murder case, news of which was blazoned on the headlines and and blared out on the radios at the bistros they frequented. He could learn no more of the facts than any other member of the public and was without the technical aids available at Police Headquarters, but his knowledge of human beings and his skill at deduction and elimination made up for that. By anonymous phone-calls to the papers and postcards to the police (in his own office), he was able to help the enquiry on till Janvier clinched his case against the murderer, and to get a great deal of innocent fun at the same time.
Maigret and the Old Lady (Inspector Maigret, Bk 33)
Who could want to kill old Valentine Besson, whose servant, Rose, died after having drunk a glass of water -- intended for her boss -- that contained sleeping pills? Maigret, called to shed light on this murder, at first suspects Arlette, Valentine's daughter, who seems to have a rather troubled private life with her husband, Theo. But greed can not be the motive: the old lady only had copies of jewels, replicas of the fabulous collection formerly owned by her husband.
Meanwhile, Valentine uses a revolver to shoot down a "vagrant" who is none other than Rose's brother.
For Maigret, who has just discovered an authentic emerald, the pieces of the puzzle begin to come together... In an atmosphere of seaside holidays, these are dark mysteries that will gradually be unveiled by the sagacious detective.
Maigret's First Case (Inspector Maigret, Bk 30)
The profession he had always yearned for did not actually exist... he imagined a cross between a doctor and a priest, a man capable of understanding another's destiny at first glance.
The very first investigation by eager young police secretary Jules Maigret leads him to a wealthy Paris family's dark secrets.
Maigret Takes a Room (Inspector Maigret, Bk 37)
While keeping watch outside Mademoiselle Clément's boarding house to await a suspect in a local bar robbery, a man named Janvier is shot in the chest. When Maigret, whose wife is away caring for her sister in Alsace, hears of the crime, he moves into the boarding house to solve the case. But the web quickly grows ever-more tangled, and Maigret must navigate generations-long secrets and a torrid affair to find his answers before it's too late. « less