Inspector Lognon-an embittered but dedicated detective-is shot. To everyone's amazament, it emerges that Lognon had spent the last ten nights in the room of a beautiful young woman-who has disappered. In retreading Lognon's secretive last days, Maigret's investigations lead him into both the murky world of art-collecting and forgery, and the obsessive mind of a detective.

'A truly wonderful writer ... marvellously readable - lucid, simple, absolutely in tune with that world he creates of run-down hotels, cold, dark barges, quayside canal-taverns, lurking prostitutes, pot-bellied burghers, taciturn youths, slippery barmen' Muriel Spark, Sunday Times