The Cellars of the Majestic (Inspector Maigret)

＂Simenon could produce endless variations, as similar and as different as Shakespeare’s sonnets or Monet’s haystacks.＂ --Adam Kirsch

When the glamorous wife of an American industrialist is murdered at a luxury Paris hotel, her past life as a nightclub dancer is the key to finding the killer. As Maigret traces surprising connections between the dead woman and the hotel’s belowstairs staff, a story of unrequited love, self-reinvention, and blackmail emerges--with one tragic, luckless suspect at the center.

Yet as Maigret knows, even the most compelling evidence isn’t infallible. Might a murkier, more disquieting truth lie behind the apparent facts of the matter? A riveting mystery and a startling journey into the darker corners of human nature, The Cellars of the Majestic showcases the full range of Georges Simenon’s uncanny psychological insight.

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.

Howard Curtis lives in Norwich, England, and has translated more than a hundred books from the French, Italian, and Spanish.