Madame Thouret had no trouble identifying her husband's body. What puzzled her was that he was wearing light brown shoes and a garish tie she'd never seen before. Maigret masterfully reconstructs the secret life of a vulnerable man who has made a desperate attempt to evade the failure and isolation of his rigidly conventional life. 'A truly wonderful writer ...marvellously readable - lucid, simple, absolutely in tune with that world he creates of run-down hotels, cold, dark barges, quaysidecanal-taverns, lurking prostitutes, pot-bellied burghers, taciturn youths, slippery barmen.' - Muriel Spark, "Sunday Times."