Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Another installment in the multivolume Maigret series, this was originally published in France in 1931. The current translation was first published in the United States in 1967. Collections containing titles such as last year's Maigret on the Riviera ( LJ 5/1/88) should welcome this to their shelves.-- MR (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Vintage Simenon, this novel was published first in 1931. Baldick's translation is rather elliptical but Inspector Maigret makes his presence felt as he returns to his boyhood home, Saint-Fiacre, where an unsigned note warns that a crime will be committed in the church on All Souls' Day. During the services, the widowed Countess de Fiacre dies but the autopsy proves she succumbed to a heart attack and Maigret--having closely watched the old, ailing, once beautiful woman--knows she was approached by no one in the church. He suspects murder, nevertheless, and begins to ask questions. What caused the fatal attack? Where is the Countess's lost missal? Why have the noble family's chateau and grounds deteriorated? Did the lady's wastrel son arrive in the village after her death, as he claims, or before? The truth emerges in a stunning twist to L'Affaire Saint-Fiacre. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

The prolific Belgian-born writer Georges Simenon produced hundreds of fictional works under his own name and 17 pseudonyms, in addition to more than 70 books about Inspector Maigret, long "the favorite sleuth of highbrow detective-story readers" (SR). More than 50 "Simenons" have been made into films. In addition to his mystery stories, he wrote what he called "hard" books, the serious psychological novels numbering well over 100. The autobiographical Pedigree, set in his native town of Liege, is perhaps his finest work. The publication of Simenon's intimate memoirs also attracted considerable attention. Simenon himself once said that he would never write a "great novel." Yet Gide called him "a great novelist, perhaps the greatest and truest novelist we have in French literature today," and Thornton Wilder (see Vol. 1) found that Simenon's narrative gift extends "to the tips of his fingers." The following are some of Simenon's novels, exclusive of the Maigret detective stories, that are in print.

(Bowker Author Biography)