Maigret and the Old People

The plot of Georges Simenon's Maigret and the Old People is classic Maigret, as the eponymous detective is called in to investigate the murder of a retired French diplomat. But Simenon does more with the story than is typical, using Maigret's inability to fit into Parisian aristocratic society as a way to explore the class divides in modern France ("These people struck him as unreal, as if they had sprung from the pages of a turn-of-the-century novel"). This is one of Simenon's better books.