Maigret and the Saturday Caller
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5.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré
Maigret is visited by a troubled man and asks him to keep in touch, hoping to curtail his criminal impulses--but when the man disappears, Maigret must investigate a crime that may or may not have occurred
When Maigret returns home at the end of a long day, he is surprised to find a tense man named Léonard Planchon waiting on his doorstep with an unusual problem. Planchon wants to kill his wife, or perhaps his wife and her lover, who for two years have been making him sleep on a cot in the dining room. He has even worked out a plan to hide their bodies in concrete. Uneasy and hoping to stop the man before he goes too far, Maigret must investigate a murder that has not yet been committed and uncover the truth behind this peculiar ménage à trois.
A fast-paced, psychologically astute mystery, Maigret and the Saturday Caller follows the inspector through Montmartre as he patiently questions Parisian partiers, bartenders, and others as to Planchon's whereabouts, stripping away a bit more of the mystery's camouflage with each encounter until they lead him to their shocking conclusion.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The redoubtable chief inspector is startled when Leonard Planchon, a desperately unhappy fellow with a harelip, confesses to Maigret that he wants to kill his wife and Roger Prou, her virile young lover. For two years they have tormented him, forcing him to turn over his business, his home, and his half of the bed (he has been relegated to a cot in the dining room). In this first American edition of a 1962 procedural by French master Simenon, Planchon disappears shortly after signing a document turning the business entirely over to Prou, and Maigret, already investigating a jewel robbery and battling an incipient flu, begins digging into a crime that may not have happened. It's a pleasure to follow the inspector through Montmartre as he patiently questions Parisian prostitutes, bartenders and others as to Planchon's whereabouts, stripping away a bit more of the mystery's camouflage with each encounter, arriving finally at a meticulously plotted but strangely disappointing denouement.
