Second paragraph of third chapter:
| Elle était grande et mince, du calibre des girls de music-hall. Traversant la rue en courant, sur ses talons trop hauts, elle pénétrait dans un petit bar où elle allait sans doute boire un café et manger des croissants. | She was tall and slim, with the build of a music-hall dancer. Running across the street on extremely high heels, she went into a little bar where she was probably going to have a cup of coffee and some croissants. |
I had never previously read any of the works of Georges Simenon, one of the best-known writers of my adopted country (though actually his famously active career took off only after he moved to Paris, aged 19, in 1922). I really enjoyed this police procedural, set in the Parisian underworld, where honour and dishonour are sometimes to be found in unexpected places – the murdered night-club owner’s family are initially suspect because of being foreign,
This was my top unread book acquired in 2012. Next on that pile is The Laertian Gamble, a Star Trek tie-in novel by Robert Sheckley.
