Georges Simenon (1903–1989) was born in Liege, Belgium. Best known in Britain as the author of the Maigret books, his prolific output of more than four hundred novels and short stories have made him a household name in continental Europe.
Linda Coverdale is the awarding-winning translator of many French works and has been honored with the title of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters for her contribution to French literature.
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The third book in the new Penguin Maigret series: Georges Simenon's haunting tale about the lengths to which people will go to escape from guilt, in a compelling new translation by Linda Coverdale.
A first ink drawing showed a hanged man swinging from a gallows on which perched an enormous crow. And there were at least twenty other etchings and pen or pencil sketches that had the same leitmotif of hanging. On the edge of a forest: a man hanging from every branch. A church steeple: beneath the weathercock, a human body dangling from each arm of the cross. . . Below another sketch were written four lines from François Villon's Ballade of the Hanged Men.
On a trip to Brussels, Maigret unwittingly causes a man's suicide, but his own remorse is overshadowed by the discovery of the sordid events that drove the desperate man to shoot himself. Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. This novel has been published in previous translations as Maigret and the Hundred Gibbets and The Crime of Inspector Maigret.
'Compelling, remorseless, brilliant.' - John Gray
'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories.' - The Guardian
'A supreme writer . . . unforgettable vividness.' - The Independent
'I love reading Simenon. He makes me think of Chekhov.' — William Faulkner
'The greatest of all, the most genuine novelist we have had in literature' — André Gide
‘A supreme writer…unforgettable vividness’ — The Independent
'Superb... The most addictive of writers... A unique teller of tales' — The Observer
‘Compelling, remorseless, brilliant.’ — John Gray
'A truly wonderful writer... marvellously readable - lucid, simple, absolutely in tune with the workd he creates' — Muriel Spark
'A novelist who entered his fictional world as it he were a part of it' — Peter Ackroyd
'Extraordinary masterpieces of the twentieth century' — John Banville