Maigret Hesitates

Maigret Hesitates is one of the more complex and engrossing of Georges Simenon's Maigret novels, as the detective spends much of the book waiting for a murder to occur (as has been predicted in a series of anonymous letters) rather than actually investigating a crime. It's not clear to either Maigret or even the letter-writer who exactly will die and when it will occur, but Maigret's sole lead — the letters' expensive stationary — leads him to the estate of a prominent attorney. Telegraphed letters describing a crime are usually a lazy plot device but Simenon executes his story extraordinarily well, with restrained tension and stronger than usual secondary characters. This is one of the very best of the Maigret novels.