<b>Gem-hard soul-probes</b> . . . not just <b>the world's bestselling detective series</b>, but <b>an imperishable literary legend</b> . . . he exposes secrets and crimes not by forensic wizardry, but by the melded powers of therapist, philosopher and confessor
Times
<b>Strangely comforting</b> . . . so many lovely bistros from the Paris of mid-20th C. The corpses are incidental, it's the food that counts.
Margaret Atwood
<b>One of the greatest writers of the 20th century</b> . . . no other writer can set up a scene as sharply and with such economy as Simenon does . . . the conjuring of a world, a place, a time, a set of characters - above all, an atmosphere.
Financial Times
<b>Simenon's supreme virtue as a novelist, to burrow beneath the surface of his characters' behaviour; to empathise</b> . . . it is this unfailing humanity that makes the Maigret books truly worth reading
Guardian
<b>Terrific</b>...the 75 Inspector Maigret books are almost <b>uniformly wonderful</b>. They are not crime or even detective fiction as ordinarily understood...they are about human foibles, moral failings and compromises, <b>set in an evocatively atmospheric Paris</b>
Sunday Times
Maigret novels . . . brim with atmosphere, insight and intelligence. They are quite unlike anything else written before or since
- India Knight, The Times
A supreme writer . . . unforgettable vividness
Independent
The most addictive of writers . . . a unique teller of tales
Observer