Inspector Jules Maigret investigates the murder of a prominent citizen of a little town on the coast of Brittany and, rather than make a quick arrest of a sad-eyed waitress who has seen too much, stays until justice is done.

In the darkness, the main room is as vast as a cathedral. A great empty space. Some warmth is still seeps from the radiators. Delfosse strikes a match. They stop a moment to catch their breath, and work out how far they have still to go. And suddenly the match falls to the ground, as Delfosse gives a sharp cry and rushes back towards the washroom door. In the dark, he loses his way, returns and bumps into Chabot. Maigret observes from a distance as...

Maigret has been interrogating Carl Andersen for seventeen hours without a confession. He's either innocent or a very good liar. So why was the body of a diamond merchant found at his isolated mansion? Why is his sister always shut away in her room? And why does everyone at Three Widows Crossroads have something to hide?

What was the woman doing here? In a stable, wearing pearl earrings, her stylish bracelet and white buckskin shoes! She must have been alive when she got there because the crime had been committed after ten in the evening. But how? And why? And no one had heard a thing! She had not screamed. The two carters had not woken up. Maigret is standing in the pouring rain by a canal. A well-dressed woman, Mary Lampson, has been found strangled in a stable...

"When Maigret's holiday plans go awry he and his wife spend their vacation in Paris, on the condition that he has nothing to do with work. However a case involving the death of a doctor's wife intrigues Maigret and he assiduously follows its development in the papers. He cannot resist playing a few tricks on his colleague Janvier who is running the case and along the way Maigret uncovers something that is crucial to the murderer's discovery..."--Publisher's...

He opened the door for her and watched her walk away down the huge corridor, then hesitate at the top of the stairs. Heads turned as she passed. You sensed she came from a different world, the world of the night, and there was something almost indecent about her in the harsh light of a winter's day' A young cabaret dancer in a black silk dress leads Inspector Maigret into a seamy world of nightclubs, drug addiction and exploitation on the streets...

In this make-believe memoir, Maigret recounts a meeting with the author himself. The account starts with the arrival of Georges Sim, as he is called here, at the Paris Police Judiciaire to soak up atmosphere for his crime novels by dogging the footsteps of Inspector Maigret. The detective is irritated by the audacious young writer who names a character after him and argues that he oversimplifies, in his fiction, the intricate duties of the police...

Maigret is the victim of a burglary in which the .45 revolver he had received as a gift from the FBI is stolen. That evening Maigret attends a dinner where François Lagrange, an acquaintance of Maigret's friend, is expected but fails to appear due to ill health. Following his instincts, Maigret decides to investigate Lagrange's absence and uncovers a body stowed in a trunk, as well as Lagrange, who refuses to talk and seems to have lost his mind....

An anonymous letter, that tells of a soon to be committed murder, takes inspector Maigret to the home of a prominent lawyer on his search for the letter's author.