Georges Simenon

Maigret at the Crossroads is a detective novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon. Published in 1931, it is one of the earliest novels to feature Inspector Maigret in the role of the chief police investigator, a character that has since become one of the best-known detectives in fiction. The plot of the novel is …

While interrogating a penniless delinquent about a sordid crime, Maigret is called to the scene of an utterly different murder, one of the richest wine merchants in Paris is dead. "Georges Simenon's Chief Inspector Maigret belongs to the Paris of today as surely as Holmes did to gaslit London." (The New York Times)