[Inspector Maigret 36] • Maigret at Picratt's

It is four o'clock in the morning and out of the rain-slick cobbled streets of Montmartre appears a garishly dressed young woman. Her lipstick is smudged and her gait is unsteady, but there is no mistaking her extraordinary allure. At the police station in the rue de la Rochefoucauld she insists that she has information of terrible urgency - then denies it an hour later. It takes two brutal stranglings and a beautiful corpse to lead Maigret, assisted by a lovelorn detective, into an all-too-familiar underworld where he traces a desperate eroticism to its inevitable conclusion.