The novels brim with atmosphere, insight and intelligence . . . quite unlike anything else written before or since -- India Knight * The Times * One of the greatest writers of the 20th century . . . no other writer can set up a scene as sharply and with such economy as Simenon does . . . the conjuring of a world, a place, a time, a set of characters - above all, an atmosphere -- John Banville * Financial Times * The father of contemporary European detective fiction . . . I loved the exotic setting of Parisian bars and run-down hotels, the economic storytelling -- Ann Cleeves * Guardian * Strangely comfortingso many lovely bistros from the Paris of the mid 20th C. The corpses are incidental, its the food that counts -- Margaret Atwood A great writer of detail, of atmosphere. His descriptions of Paris influenced me -- Leļla Slimani * Financial Times * To inhabit the vividly realised world of Parisian streets, dives, bistros and high-class hotels . . . it is this unfailing humanity that makes the Maigret books truly worth reading -- Graeme Macrae Burnet * Guardian * Exceptional Simenons writing still seems freshone of the great pleasures is the summoning of Frances many landscapes and accompanying social milieux . . . There is also, and its a chief glory of the books, a whole range of different Parises, from the shiny rich to the hypocritical bourgeois middle to the struggling, furious world of the poor, desperate and professionally criminal -- John Lanchester * Times Literary Supplement *
