I understand the appeal of Maigret. He is very like Brunetti and Gamache, with a touch of Adrian Monk thrown in: intuitive, detail-oriented, and not afraid to flout authority if need be. He is happily married to an understanding woman and works for and with people who sometimes tend to get in the way of the investigation rather than furthering it.
I had a very difficult time following the characters in this novel, partly because there were so very many of them and partly because I spent a lot of time wondering how to pronounce things (it's Meh-Gray, by the way), like "Le Cloaguen." Because this novel was published in 1944 the modern reader is treated to a glimpse of the life and values of the past, including public pay phones, psychiatrists who make house calls to evaluate the sanity of murder suspects, and young women who do not live with older, adoptive brothers because it is not considered proper. As for the mystery, the murder of a fortune teller while a man is mysteriously locked in the next room with no key, it is intriguing and the eventual solution makes sense. I think that familiarity with the series would have made reading this one a bit more enjoyable!
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