MAIGRET IN EXILE

Vintage miniature Maigret (1942). The Inspector, temporarily exiled to a dull provincial town, is summoned to a local judge's house by the judge's peeping-tom neighbors--they've seen a dead body through the window. And sure enough, Maigret catches the judge in the act of trying to dispose of this unidentifiable body, about which he claims to know nothing. Could the dead man be connected to the judge's mentally deficient, nymphomaniacal daughter and her affair with a local mussel-gatherer? And can the judge's surly silence be explained by his past--specifically, his promiscuous wife (long since fled) and a hushed-up crime of passion? Ideal domestic Maigret materials, handled with far more liveliness than in later Simenons. Only one quibble. This is more tale than novel, in length and feel at most a novella, the perfect airport paperback; but at $10.00--Sacre bleu!