Maigret and the Man on the Bench

“One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequaled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories.” —The Guardian

Inspector Maigret must untangle the web of lies left behind by a murdered man whose family didn’t know him as well as they thought

When a man is found stabbed to death in an alley off Boulevard Saint-Martin, his identity card shows a workplace that had gone out of business three years earlier. As far as his wife knew, he still worked there, and she insists that the shoes and a tie he was wearing when he was killed “couldn’t be his.” It soon becomes evident that although he had a source of income, he spent most of his time sitting on a bench in the neighborhood, often with the same unknown man. But can Maigret find this mysterious companion?

In Maigret and the Man on the Bench, the inimitable inspector must untangle the web of a dead man’s lies that go deeper than anyone could have imagined.