Kirjahaku

'Compelling, remorseless, brilliant' John Gray 'Try to imagine a guest, a wealthy woman, staying at the Majestic with her husband, her son, a nurse and a governess . . . In a suite that costs more than a thousand francs a day . . . At six in the morning, she's strangled, not in her room, but in the basement locker room'Below stairs at a glamorous hotel on the Champs-Élysées, the workers' lives are worlds away from the luxury enjoyed by the wealthy guests. When their worlds meet, Maigret discovers a tragic story of ambition, blackmail and unrequited love.This novel has been published in a previous translation as Maigret and the Hotel Majestic.'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories' Guardian 'A supreme writer . . . unforgettable vividness' Independent

"Simenon could produce endless variations, as similar and as different as Shakespeare's sonnets or Monet's haystacks." --Adam Kirsch When the glamorous wife of an American industrialist is murdered at a luxury Paris hotel, her past life as a nightclub dancer is the key to finding the killer. As Maigret traces surprising connections between the dead woman and the hotel's belowstairs staff, a story of unrequited love, self-reinvention, and blackmail emerges--with one tragic, luckless suspect at the center. Yet as Maigret knows, even the most compelling evidence isn't infallible. Might a murkier, more disquieting truth lie behind the apparent facts of the matter? A riveting mystery and a startling journey into the darker corners of human nature, The Cellars of the Majestic showcases the full range of Georges Simenon's uncanny psychological insight.