For lovers of vintage detective stories, selected volumes of the late seminal Belgian author Georges Simenon's (
SYKM,
Wikipedia) works about his highly popular and much-adapted Inspector Maigret (
Wikipedia) are on sale in both French and English (not the same ones, though).
@ $2.99 from Penguin (non-couponable, available in Canada & US; different editions in the UK which are not on sale), who are committed to issuing new translations of the Maigret stories, two novels originally published in 1931 (these have had various different titles in previous translations, given in the full blurbs); regular pricing goes from $6 to $14 CAD:
- The Late Monsieur Gallet translated by Anthea Bell (Wikipedia, one half of the excellent Astérix translation team), which was originally M. Gallet décédé, 3rd in the original editing order given on French Wikipedia's bibliography
- The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien translated by Linda Coverdale (Wikipedia), originally Le Pendu du Saint-Pholien, 4th in the Wikipedia order. NB: it's actually not cost-effective to buy this one on sale at the moment if you intend to read more in the series, as the 4-book Inspector Maigret Omnibus: Volume 1 contains this and #1-2 & #9, the cost of which the first two alone is greater than the $15.99 CAD for the omnibus, unless there are further discount promotions
@ £1.99 from Penguin in the UK ($10.99 for the corresponding Canadian edition):
Pietr the Latvian translated by David Bellos (
Wikipedia), originally
Pietr Le-Letton and #1 in the series. Again, not very cost-effective to buy, since the
UK edition of the omnibus is here and priced at £12.99, picking up the others individually will cost you at least £4.99 each unless they drop at a later date. The UK also has the second volume which North America lacks:
Inspector Maigret Omnibus 2 at £9.99.
And @ $1.99 each from Place des Éditeurs' confusingly-named Omnibus imprint (non-couponable), 4 collections of Simenon's early short stories in the original French, for a very cheap price (French publishers rarely discount, and though we've gotten one Simenon freebie from them in the past, the rest have remained at $8 or above, though there are 3/4-novel actual omnibus editions priced at $26 each):