The Saint-Fiacre Affair (Inspector Maigret)

An evocative tale from Georges Simenon that unearths the inspector’s past: Maigret finds an anonymous note predicting a crime in his hometown.

I wish to inform you that a crime will be committed at the church of Saint-Fiacre during first mass on All Souls’ Day.

This handwritten note is deposited at the headquarters of the Police Judiciaire in Paris. Maigret sets off for the village, having been there last for his father’s funeral.

As bleary-eyed people depart the All Souls’ service, Maigret thinks the note must be wrong--until the motionless Countess of Saint-Fiacre, upon closer look, is found dead in her pew. Who is responsible for the crime? Could it be the countess’s young secretary and alleged lover, the tight-lipped priest, the profligate Count of Saint-Fiacre, or the new estate manager? Though inundated with troubling memories from his past, Maigret remains steadfast in his hunt for the truth behind this sinister turn of events.

Georges Simenon (1903-1989) was born in Liège, Belgium. An intrepid traveler with a profound interest in people, Simenon strove on and off the page to understand--and not to judge--the human condition in all its shades. His books include the Inspector Maigret series and a richly varied body of wider work united by its evocative power, its economy of means, and its penetrating psychological insight. He is among the most widely read writers in the global canon.

Shaun Whiteside is a Northern Irish translator of French, Dutch, German, and Italian literature. He has translated many works of nonfiction and novels, including Manituana and Altai, by Wu Ming; The Weekend, by Bernhard Schlink; Serotonin, by Michel Houellebecq; and Magdalena the Sinner, by Lilian Faschinger, which won the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for German translation in 1997.