Original title: L’Amie de Madame Maigret
The whole team of Inspector Maigret has been chasing a case that landed on their lap by chance - a anonymous letter informed the criminal police that a bookbinder called Steuvels from Paris has killed a man and burned his body in his central heating stove. While the policemen were skeptical, they made some discreet enquires into the bookbinder in question and found enough circumstantial evidence to start a formal investigation. One of the neighbours saw heavy smoke throughout the weekend coming from the bookbinder’s chimney and him throwing away a lot of ash into the dustbins. The search of the apartment and his workshop provided not a lot clues, the wife of the suspect was gone for a weekend, so she knows nothing that was going on here, and the Steuvels himself just keeps very quiet. The police have found two human teeth in the stove, they found a suit with a bloodstain in the wardrobe, but the bookbinder claims he knows nothing about the teeth in the ashes and the suit is not his, although it does suit him perfectly. Maigret is struggling to make sense of the whole case, but his mind is also preoccupied by what happened to her wife when she was waiting for an appointment with the dentist.
A slightly different Maigret novel, the plot starts when the investigation is already underway and we see the first part through eyes of the detective’s wife. But just like in most of Georges Simenon detective novels, the story takes huge steps forward even when it seems that nothing particularly important is taking place. The Friend of Madame Maigret is perhaps not on the level of the best Maigret novels, but it still is a good read that will keep you guessing until the end.
Do you have what it takes to solve a case like this?
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