Signed, Picpus

By Georges Simenon

Book Overview

"A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason." --John Le Carr

Maigret dismantles an intricate network of lies stretching from Paris to Nice in this page-turning mystery

"Mechanically, he had put his pince-nez down on the blotter and looked at it there with his large, short-sighted eyes. It is at that moment that the strange thing happens. One of the lenses, acting as a mirror, reflected the criss-cross, hatched ink marks which had dried on the blotter and he could just make out a couple of words."

When a fortune-teller is found murdered in her apartment, Maigret must find out not only who commited the crime, but why it was predicted in a note found earlier--signed by the unknown Picpus.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0241188466
• ISBN13: 9780241188460
• Release Date: March 2016
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.0" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

A tangled plot with multiple culprits

I thought this would be a story about a fortuneteller, but the teller of fortunes is very quickly murdered, making way for a quirky cast of characters engaged in all sorts of mischief. As often happens in Maigret stories, the poor people are much nicer than the rich people, and Maigret shows considerable compassion for the weak minded. I can't bear to reveal any of the plot and its wonderfully fragmentary clues. The reader should have the fun of discovering the several crimes and misdemeanors that led to the fortuneteller's death.