The Flemish House (Inspector Maigret)

A moody, rain-swept mystery from Georges Simenon that unfolds in a border town haunted by floods and deep secrets.

In The Flemish House, Maigret arrives in the rainy, flood-prone town of Givet on the Belgian border to solve the case of a missing young woman. He has been hired by the wealthy Peeters family, who are suspected of being responsible, to clear their name. As he plumbs the mysteries, prejudices, and hidden dramas of this town caught between two worlds, he has to decide whether there was foul play involved in the vanishing of the young woman, or if she has simply been chased away by the oppressive air of this benighted and fraught no-man’s-land. As he investigates, he finds himself becoming increasingly fascinated by Anna Peeters, the daughter of the family, who, stoic and unemotional, seems to be the linchpin in the strange compact that keeps the family together.

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.