Maigret and the Dead Girl

by Georges Simenon

Now out in a movie with Gerard Depardieu as the French police inspector, Maigret and the Dead Girl is a good place to start with this classic European detective series by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon (1903-1989). Simenon wrote around 75 Maigret novels, so the quality tends to vary. These are realistic novels, in that they’re not selling escapism and you do feel like you’re in Paris in the 1950s, going around with Maigret as he deals with often sad lives and even sadder crimes.