The Late Monsieur Gallet (Inspector Maigret, 3) Georges Simenon. Penguin Books (ISBN: 9780141393377) 2014 (first published in 1931).

Summary: Gallet’s death seems that of an uninteresting failure until Maigret discovers that nothing about him is as it seems.

A non-descript man checks into a hotel in Tracy-Sancerre. His usual room is unavailable, so he takes a back one, facing out on a courtyard, The next morn, he is found dead with a gunshot wound to the face and a stab wound to the heart.

Maigret is sent to investigate. He finds an ordinary man, Monsieur Gallet, with an old, shiny suit. The man’s widow, who lived in Saint Fargeau, thought he was in Rouen. She even had a postcard from there. Maigret learns he was a traveling salesman. The widow is rather vain, from a family that considered her husband a failure. Her only consolation is that the dead man had taken out a 300,000 franc life insurance policy. Her son seems aloof and ambitious, and not terribly broken up.

When Maigret contacts the man’s company, he finds they have not employed him for eighteen years. He’s not in Rouen. Nor is he working at the job everyone believed he was doing. His attacker or attackers first wounded him from outside his room, then killed him with a knife wound in his room. And how has he purchased a house, paid for a life insurance policy, and maintained their lifestyle when he has no job? Why was he in Tracy-Sancerre?

Suddenly, this non-descript, unattractive man becomes interesting to Maigret. The fascination in this story is how Maigret discovers the nature of the double life this man was living and how he died. Like others in the series, there are just enough twists, interesting characters and red herrings to make this interesting without dragging out the story. Simenon’s genius lies in telling a story with nothing extraneous and lots that is puzzling.