Pietr the Latvian

Gem-hard soul-probes . . . not just the world's bestselling detective series, but an imperishable literary legend . . . he exposes secrets and crimes not by forensic wizardry, but by the melded powers of therapist, philosopher and confessor

Boyd Tonkin, Times

Strangely comforting . . . so many lovely bistros from the Paris of mid-20th C. The corpses are incidental, it's the food that counts.

Margaret Atwood, Margaret Atwood

One of the greatest writers of the 20th century . . . no other writer can set up a scene as sharply and with such economy as Simenon does . . . the conjuring of a world, a place, a time, a set of characters - above all, an atmosphere.

John Banville, Financial Times

Simenon's supreme virtue as a novelist, to burrow beneath the surface of his characters' behaviour; to empathise . . . it is this unfailing humanity that makes the Maigret books truly worth reading.

Graeme Macrae Burnet, Guardian