Maigret and the Headless Corpse

If you're curious about Simenon's unique style and his great character Maigret, this is the one to start with. More than any of the other 50 Maigrets I've read, this one epitomizes the qualities that make these books so remarkable; Maigret solves crimes, like this one, not so much by the regular procedure of detection, but by trying to understand the circumstances of the crime and the lives of the people involved. In this book, the crime becomes almost irrelevant compared to the study of character and human unhappiness.