My Friend Maigret (Inspector Maigret): 31

On a tiny Mediterranean island, a rowdy fisherman is shot dead mere hours after mentioning “my friend Maigret.” The suspects are few―and the famous inspector is trapped among them.

On the tiny Mediterranean island of Porquerolles, the fisherman Marcel Pacaud has been shot dead. Hours earlier, he was overheard mentioning “my friend Maigret.” The inspector once knew Pacaud, who has a long rap sheet for pimping and violence. But that was many years ago. If Maigret’s name has inspired murder, he cannot fathom why.

Stepping into Porquerolles’s intoxicating atmosphere of tropical heat and perfumed air, he questions an eccentric clique of islanders. Rich or poor, young or old, French, Dutch, or British: they’re all exiles from conventional society. Can Maigret solve the case before he succumbs to “porquerollitis” and joins them? In My Friend Maigret, Georges Simenon puts his mischievous twist on the closed circle mystery, crafting a portrait of an idyll marred by evil.