The Carter of La Providence

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré

A tragic tale of lost identity, and a mystery that only Inspector Maigret can solve

“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.”

Inspector Maigret is standing in the pouring rain by a canal. A well-dressed woman, Mary Lampson, has been found strangled in a stable nearby. Why did her glamorous, hedonistic life come to such a brutal end here? Surely her taciturn husband Sir Walter knows—or maybe the answers lie with the crew of the barge La Providence.

Georges Simenon (1903–1989) was born in Liège, Belgium. Best known in Britain as the author of the Maigret books, his prolific output of more than four hundred novels and short stories have made him a household name in continental Europe.

David Coward is a translator from French, whose translations include works by authors such as Alexandre Dumas, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, and the Marquis de Sade.