I am not going to write a lengthy review of this. I have been dipping in and out of Maigret for about six years. This is the 7th of the series I have read. I continue to enjoy them enough to keep reading. But I continue not to be blown away by them.

In this one, Maigret is on vacation with his wife. But she ends up in the hospital, and he is a bit lost.

I recently read The Black Tower by PD James (part of the Adam Dalgliesh series). In both books, the main character is a police homicide inspector. In The Black Tower, Dalgliesh himself is recovering from surgery, but both are officially off duty and are a bit irritated that their professional life seems to be following them. (The fourth Inspector Gamache is also about the inspector being on vacation and a murder happening.)

The idea of investigators or detectives never being able to get away from murder is both a joke and a trope. Dorothy Sayer named her last full Wimsey book Busman’s Honeymoon, a phrase connoting how it isn’t a vacation for a Bus Driver to take a bus to go away on vacation.

I picked up this book on audiobook in a buy-one-get-one-free sale. I will not complain about it because it was a good change of pace, and my cost was reasonable. But this is a series that, so far, I have enjoyed but not loved. And I don’t know why. I have a couple more that I have picked up on sale in various formats, but I think unless something really grabs me in those, I probably will not buy any more.