Vintage crime at home and abroad – for the #1949Club!

As has become a tradition, I decided to start off our latest club reading week with some crime novels, and 1949 was certainly a bumper year for those. I mentioned some in my post last week on previous reads, and came up with a good number of possibilities. However, I decided to skip Christie this time round and instead went for two other favourite authors – Simenon and Gladys Mitchell! My Friend Maigret by Simenon (translated by Nigel Ryan) 1949 was a heck of a year for fans of Maigret, as his creator published no less than four titles featuring the French sleuth. This one is a short and punchy mystery which takes the Inspector out of his normal comfort zone and that very much adds to the enjoyment of the book! As the story begins, Maigret is stuck in rainy Paris, interrogating a suspect and frankly getting nowhere. Things are made worse by the fact that he’s been landed with a visiting Scotland Yard man, Inspector Pyke. The latter has been sent over the channel to study the great…