Georges Simenon writes detective stories, many featuring the amiable Inspecteur Maigret, almost too human to fit the traditional image of the sleuth. Simenon may be read more for atmosphere than for thrills, for Maigret's Paris, or the provincial towns of many non-Maigret stories; the weather mostly wintry with long evenings, the interest in trains, back streets, canals, bars, the small homes of small people in small worlds. And among these I find even more intriguing those with a Belgian scene, the Meuse, the industrial zone around Liege where young Simenon began as a reporter on the local press. Here are his native tow-paths and backyards, alleys and impasses, and a certain quality of mud, of earth and water and the two compounded.

Simenon does not normally set out to retail experiences that demand a transcendental world, least of all that purveyed by the Church. Where religious detail slips in it is seldom more than part of the narrative, handy description—as far as the author is concerned echoes from childhood, and usually no more than that for the characters too. Churchgoing is something children do and it is good for them; subsequently a minority elects to remain in this church sub-culture and becomes a characteristic feature of Sunday mornings.