Have been meaning to bitch - even though I like Simenon books, they're not mysteries in the whodunit sense. Like that Maigret and the Wine Merchant I mentioned. Someone killed the wine merchant, yes. Could it have been one of his hundreds of female conquests? His wife? A cuckold? Wait - maybe it's that lone shabby figure in a raincoat who keeps sort of following Maigret. The guy might as well just turn up at Maigret's apartment! Which he does. So the detective (charmingly fighting a head cold the whole time) doesn't really DO anything. "You killed him? Well, thanks for coming over and saving me a trip in this rain!"
These sort of books are a poppy seed under my partial. Not that everything has to hang on some found clue exactly, a la Agatha Christie, but even Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett...yes, yes, your writing is stylish, I get it.
I suppose the smart thing to do would be to stay away from these.
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