This is a new translation of Georges Simenon's sensational tale of deceit and back-stabbing in an isolated community, book six in the new Penguin Maigret series. 'She came forward, the outlines of her figure blurred in the half-light. She came forward like a film star, or rather like the ideal woman[...]

In cool, precise prose, and with an unerring sense of the absurd, Norman Manea's four novellas create a picture of everyday life in a grotesque police state, expressing terror and hope, fear and solidarity, the humorous triviality of the ordinary, and the painful search for an ideal.[...]