Maigret in New York (Inspector Maigret)

“Georges Simenon was the twentieth century’s Balzac. But while Balzac spares us nothing of what he’s learned, Simenon’s genius is the art of reduction. He can teach you how to run a restaurant in a few sentences scattered throughout a novel and how to poison your spouse with even fewer lines.” —Gary Indiana

Maigret, now fifty-six and retired as detective chief inspector, is crossing the Atlantic for the first time. But this isn’t a vacation: his traveling companion is law student Jean Maura,...