Maigret and the Loner

This is really one of the best Maigret books. Our hero must solve the nearly unsolvable, the murder of an unknown tramp. Once his name was known, Maigret had to go back 20 years to an unsolved case and find the needed clues. Going back two decades finally led Maigret to the surprising solution of the tramp's murder and the older case at the same time. I don't want to give away too much for those that aren't familiar with the story and I'll leave it there. [...] At any rate, if you're a Maigret fan, don't miss this book. The same if you love good police investigations as this murder within a murder is one of the best.

One of the last of about 400 novels by Georges Simenon, "Maigret et l'homme tout seul" (published in 1971, set in 1965) is one of the more complicated Chief Inspector Maigret cases. The body of fastidiously coiffured man who has been shot is found amidst a vast accumulation of junk in a house slated for demolition one muggy Paris summer day. There are no clues about who the dead man is, so before trying to find out who killed him and why, Maigret must first figure out who he was and how he came to be where he was shot. There is a very bitter wife (a recurrent figure in Simenon fiction, especially "The Cat") and some long-ago passions, and a long-ago (just after WWII) unsolved murder case that Maigret reopens in his quest to understand why (as much or more than who) killed the derelict. The investigation involves Maigret going to the Mediterranean coast in a quite humorous sortie. As usual, he eats well, though he was curbing his intake of beer on his physician's orders in this top-notch police procedural novel.