Detectionary
A biographical dictionary
of leading characters in detective and mystery fiction,
including famous and little-known sleuths,
their helpers, rogues both heroic and sinister,
and some of their most memorable adventures,
as recounted in novels, short stories, and films.
Compiled by Otto Penzler, Chris Steinbrunner,
Marvin Lachman, Charles Shibuk, Francis M. Nevins, Jr.
The Overlook Press, Woodstock, New York
2nd printing, 1977 ©1971 Hammermill Paper Company, Inc.
ISBN: 0-87951-041-2

The patient Commissaire Jules Maigret, great-hearted investigator of the Police Judiciaire, does not believe in physical clues or elaborate deductions; he solves his cases by quieter and simpler means. He will wander the streets, ask irrelevant questions, sit down at a sidewalk café to smoke his pipe and have a beer or a calvados, trudge bear-like back to his overheated little office on the Quai des Orfevres and look at reports. In short, he will absorb the essence of the milieu and probe the good and evil in the hearts of men and women until the person he is seeking reveals himself. In this respect, the patience of Commissaire Maigret is infinite. For an English-speaking reader, dependent on tangible clues and chains of empirical reasoning, the Maigret stories may at first seem intellectually weak and insubstantial; on closer acquaintance they will be seen to have a strange and compelling fascination all their own, and the humanity of the characters and the sights and smells and sounds of France come alive on every page to be savored.