Félicie

By Georges Simenon

Book Overview

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

A story of love and obsession featuring a most memorable femme fatale, starring the intrepid Inspector Maigret

Peg Leg Lapie, a crusty old sailor, is found mysteriously murdered in a most incongruous setting: a picturesque cottage near Paris, where he lived attended only by his young housekeeper, F licie. But Lapie was not alone--Maigret, chief inspector of the Paris police, is sure of it. A man at work in his garden, wearing clogs and a straw hat, does not suddenly drop his tools to go indoors and fetch a bottle of brandy to drink alone in the summerhouse. There must have been another glass that someone removed. But F licie, in her red hat trimmed with an iridescent feather, proves a champion adversary, as skilled in innuendo and evasion as Maigret is in deduction.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0241188660
• ISBN13: 9780241188668
• Release Date: May 2016
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.1" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

A flighty young woman torments Maigret

Jules Lepie (Peg Leg) is a bookkeeper who loathes adventure, to the point of never marrying. But adventure pursues him. One day he embarks on a long sea voyage purely by mistake - and loses a leg in a brawl! Peg Leg then retires to a placid development of cute little pink brick houses with tiny gardens. But once again peace eludes him. For no apparent reason, he's shot dead in his perfect dollhouse. To the astonishment of relatives, his heir turns out to be his servant girl Félicie. This skinny young woman with her nanny-goat forehead, la-di-da airs and flamboyant clothes leads Maigret quite a dance. What's the meaning of her odd behavior? She won't answer the simplest question without telling a lie. Trapping the slippery Félicie seems impossible. So naturally Maigret becomes obsessed with her. He can't tear himself away from this outlandish girl and her fairy-tale town. Simenon creates one of his oddest and most amusing characters in Félicie. And in this delightful book, Maigret's style of working the case is at its most erratic and eccentric.