Inspector Maigret knew who she was, of course. Her name was Cécile. Several times in recent days, she had shown up at the headquarters of the Parisian Police, sitting in the room the police called "The Aquarium" because of the glass wall which let them see who was waiting to speak to them. She wanted to speak to Maigret, to tell him of strange things happening in the apartment she shared with her aunt. This day, Maigret had seen Cécile come in, but, as he came through, she had sent a message to Maigret that said, “You simply must see me. A terrible thing happened last night.” But Maigret, in the course of a busy day, lost track of Cécile – until she disappeared from the Aquarium. And when Maigret, now worried about her, want to her apartment to see what he could find – well, by then it was too late, for Cécile was dead. And so begins a harrowing chase for Maigret in Cécile Is Dead a 1942 novel by Georges Simenon featuring Detective Chief Inspector Maigret. It is the subject of the audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the entire review by clicking here.
Not only is Cécile dead, she was murdered – strangled, right inside police headquarters, her body left in a closet just down the hall from that police waiting room known as The Aquarium. But by whom? And why? In her apartment, Maigret finds the body of Cécile's Aunt Juliet. Was this the “terrible thing” that Cécile tried to report to Maigret on that last morning of her life?
As usual in a Maigret mystery, the emphasis is on the characters we meet in the course of the novel, for there are a great many potential suspects.Many – perhaps most – of Simenon’s Maigret novels rely much more heavily on mood and character than they do on clever plotting. But Cécile is Dead is unusually well plotted, with a number of clever twists (and a solution which literally comes in the final words of the book). Whether you enjoy the clever plotting or the memorable characters I think you’ll find a great deal to like in Cécile is Dead.
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