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
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, The Times
Terrific...the 75 Inspector Maigret books are almost uniformly wonderful. They are not crime or even detective fiction as ordinarily understood...they are about human foibles, moral failings and compromises, set in an evocatively atmospheric Paris
- David Mills, Sunday Times
A great writer of detail, of atmosphere
- Leïla Slimani, Financial Times
A genius … Simenon broke all the rules
- Jake Kerridge, Daily Telegraph
The novels brim with atmosphere, insight and intelligence . . . quite unlike anything else written before or since
- India Knight, The Times
Exceptional… Simenon’s writing still seems fresh…one of the great pleasures is the summoning of France’s many landscapes and accompanying social milieux . . . There is also, and it’s a chief glory of the books, a whole range of different Parises, from the shiny rich to the hypocritical bourgeois middle to the struggling, furious world of the poor, desperate and professionally criminal
- John Lanchester, Times Literary Supplement
I never read contemporary fiction–with one exception: the works of Simenon
- T.S. Eliot,
One of the most important writers of our century
- Gabriel García Márquez,
An astute observer of human nature, writing in a spare and vivid style
- Amor Towles,
'Irresistible . . . so tightly wound that there's no natural place to put it down' Independent
'Maigret had questioned thousands, tens of thousands of people in the course of his career, some occupying important positions, others who were more famous for their wealth, and others still who were considered the most intelligent of international criminals.
Yet he attached an importance to this interrogation he had attached to no previous interrogation, and it wasn't Gouin's social position that overawed him, or his worldwide fame.'
'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories' Guardian