Maigret and The Lazy Burglar

In this trio of novels, Inspector Jules Maigret is faced with three very different deaths and, correspondingly, three very different milieus, each depicted with Simenon's characteristic sureness of touch.

In Maigret's Failure, the vulgarly rich owner of a chain of butcher shops, "The King of the Meat Trade," is murdered for motives both understandable and obvious. In Maigret in Society, on the other hand, the inspector confronts a cast of characters so subtle and overbred as to seem unreal. Most remarkable, perhaps, is Simenon's widely praised creation of the thief in Maigret and the Lazy Burglar, in which a risky profession exercised by an eminently cautious man.

The common thread to all three novellas is Simenon's astounding virtuosity and, of course, the inimitable Maigret.