Today, we pay tribute to one of such characters and present to you one of the first novels about a great detective, unrivalled policemen and exemplary husband – Jules Maigret!

A world class criminal – the titular Pietr the Latvian – is expected to arrive at the Central Train Station in Paris, and, of course, it is up to Inspector Maigret to intercept him. However, it seems that Pietr's competitors in crime caught up with him first: a man matching the fraudster's description is found dead in a train carriage. The trick is that Maigret has just seen exactly the same person leaving the train alive and well…

Although many of the plot devices and shocking reveals featured in the novel may be familiar to us from a hundred of other novels created since then (and, for that matter, appear not shocking at all), the main plot twist will hardly leave you unmoved… for various reasons.

One of them is that the novel's author Georges Simenon is a native of Liège, our Belgian sister-city. Despite having left his city already at 19 and having lived in various countries and on several continents, he is the compatriot that all Liège and Belgium residents pride themselves upon.

On the occasion of Simenon's one hundredth birthday, a statue of him was opened in Liège. A stout man in a trademark bowler hat, resembling both the author and his most famous character, is sitting on a bench and enjoying his pipe.