MAIGRET AND THE OLD PEOPLE

(Penguin £7.99) MAIGRET is out of his depth. Or so he feels as he gets to grips with the violent death of a retired diplomat. The victim, with aristocratic lineage and society friends, is an unlikely candidate for gun crime.

Then the chief inspector finds a cache of letters revealing a longstanding but unconsummated affair between the dead man and a recently widowed princess. But this insight into the private lives of the upper class reveals no motive.

A tight- lipped housekeeper attracts suspicion, but what reason can she have for taking against her benevolent employer?

Georges Simenon knows no limits to his flights of imagination.