Maigret and Monsieur Charles

Simenon's supreme virtue as a novelist, to burrow beneath the surface of his characters' behaviour; to empathise . . . it is this unfailing humanity that makes the Maigret books truly worth reading

Graeme Macrae Burnet, Guardian

Gem-hard soul-probes . . . not just the world's bestselling detective series, but an imperishable literary legend . . . he exposes secrets and crimes not by forensic wizardry, but by the melded powers of therapist, philosopher and confessor

Boyd Tonkin, Times

One of the greatest writers of the 20th century . . . no other writer can set up a scene as sharply and with such economy as Simenon does . . . the conjuring of a world, a place, a time, a set of characters - above all, an atmosphere.

John Banville, Financial Times

Strangely comforting . . . so many lovely bistros from the Paris of mid-20th C. The corpses are incidental, it's the food that counts.

Margaret Atwood, Margaret Atwood

Terrific...the 75 Inspector Maigret books are almost uniformly wonderful. They are not crime or even detective fiction as ordinarily understood...they are about human foibles, moral failings and compromises, set in an evocatively atmospheric Paris

David Mills, Sunday Times

Maigret novels . . . brim with atmosphere, insight and intelligence. They are quite unlike anything else written before or since

India Knight, The Times