Author Guide · Crime & Psychological Fiction
Books Written by
Georges Simenon often finished a novel in ten or eleven days, writing one chapter a day; if a book was interrupted for more than 48 hours, he threw it away. Born in Liège in 1903, he wrote more than 200 pulp novels under pseudonyms before he put his own name on Pietr the Latvian (1931), the first of 75 novels about Inspector Jules Maigret of the Paris police. Alongside them he wrote 117 darker books he called romans durs, “hard novels” about ordinary people pushed past their limit. By his death in 1989 his books had sold over 500 million copies. Nobody reads all of them. This guide covers his 13 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 13 key books · 1931–1972 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Georges Simenon wrote 192 novels under his own name: 75 Maigret novels and 117 romans durs, plus over 200 early pulp novels under pseudonyms. His best-known books include Pietr the Latvian (1931), the first Maigret, The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (1938), Dirty Snow (1948) and The Cat (1967). Start with Pietr the Latvian; below you can see which of the romans durs to read next.
Where to Start with Georges Simenon
If you want to meet Maigret
→ Pietr the Latvian (1931) — the first case, where the series begins.
If you want a roman dur to start with
→ The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (1938) — a clerk who walks out of his life.
If you want his darkest novel
→ Dirty Snow (1948) — a young criminal in an occupied city.
If you want Maigret at his most assured
→ Maigret Sets a Trap (1955) — the serial-killer case in Montmartre.
13 Georges Simenon Books, in Order
Pietr the Latvian
The first Maigret novel published under Simenon’s own name, begun in 1930 and launched by Fayard in 1931. Maigret tracks an international swindler known as Pietr the Latvian from a Paris luxury hotel to the Normandy coast, and the case turns on a man who seems to be two people. It opened the 75-novel series and, in 2013, Penguin’s complete retranslation.
The Night at the Crossroads
A diamond dealer from Antwerp is found shot in a car in a garage at an isolated crossroads south of Paris, where three houses face each other. Maigret’s first suspect is a Danish aristocrat who lives there with his strange sister. Jean Renoir filmed it in 1932, with his brother Pierre Renoir as Maigret.
Mr Hire’s Engagement
Monsieur Hire, a solitary, disliked man in a suburb of Paris, falls under suspicion when a young woman is murdered nearby. He spends his nights watching a neighbour, Alice, through her window, and she knows more about the murder than she lets on. Julien Duvivier filmed it as Panique (1946), and Patrice Leconte as Monsieur Hire (1989).
Tropic Moon
Joseph Timar, a young Frenchman, arrives in Gabon to work for a timber company and finds it bankrupt. He falls into an obsessive affair with the wife of his hotel’s owner, who may be a murderer, and comes apart in the heat. The New York Review Books reissue of 2005 brought it back into print in English.
The Man Who Watched Trains Go By
Kees Popinga, a respectable Dutch clerk, learns that the shipping firm he works for is secretly bankrupt and that his employer is about to disappear. He decides he has nothing left to lose, leaves his family, goes to Paris and becomes a murderer, writing to the newspapers about himself while the police search for him.
The Widow
Jean, a young man recently out of prison, finds work on the farm of Tati Couderc, a widow in the French countryside who is feuding with her late husband’s family. They become lovers, until he turns to a younger woman. Also published as The Widow Couderc, it was filmed in 1971 with Simone Signoret and Alain Delon.
Monsieur Monde Vanishes
On his forty-eighth birthday, Norbert Monde, a prosperous Paris businessman, shaves off his moustache, withdraws 300,000 francs and leaves his life without a word. In the south of France he works at a nightclub, under another name, and meets his first wife again, now an addict.
Pedigree
Simenon’s most autobiographical novel: the childhood of Roger Mamelin in Liège in the years before and during the First World War, built on his own family, his mother’s anxieties and the streets he grew up in.
Dirty Snow
In an unnamed city under foreign occupation, nineteen-year-old Frank Friedmaier, who lives in his mother’s brothel, commits his first murder almost casually. He fixes on the daughter of a neighbour, a tram driver who saw him, and is eventually arrested and interrogated by the occupiers. Also published in English as The Snow Was Dirty and The Snow Was Black.
Maigret Sets a Trap
Five women have been stabbed in Montmartre and Paris is in a panic. Maigret plants a false story in the press and uses policewomen as bait to draw the killer out. Jean Delannoy filmed it in 1958, with Jean Gabin as Maigret.
The Blue Room
Tony Falcone, a married man in a small French town, has an affair with Andrée, a woman he has known since school, in the blue room of a hotel. After two deaths, he is questioned by a judge and stands trial, and the book reconstructs what was said in that room. Mathieu Amalric filmed it in 2014.
The Cat
Émile and Marguerite, an elderly couple married late in life, live in a Paris house in a neighbourhood being demolished. After his cat dies, apparently poisoned, they stop speaking and communicate only through notes passed across the table. Pierre Granier-Deferre filmed it in 1971 with Jean Gabin and Simone Signoret.
Maigret and Monsieur Charles
The last of the 75 Maigret novels. A notary’s wife reports that her husband, who has a habit of disappearing to Paris nightclubs as “Monsieur Charles”, has not come back. Maigret, who has just turned down the top job at the Police Judiciaire, investigates the marriage. Later that year Simenon gave up writing fiction.
In What Order to Read Georges Simenon
The Maigret novels can be read in any order: Maigret barely ages, and each book is a stand-alone case. Penguin’s retranslation, published at about one a month from 2013 to 2020, follows publication order from Pietr the Latvian to Maigret and Monsieur Charles, which is the simplest way to follow the series if you want to read many of them.
The romans durs have no connection to each other at all. Read them as single novels, and mix them with Maigret: the detective books show his sympathy for people who do terrible things, while the hard novels show the same people with nobody coming to understand them.
A reading path
1. Pietr the Latvian (1931)
2. The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (1938)
3. Maigret Sets a Trap (1955)
4. Dirty Snow (1948)
5. The Cat (1967)
A Selection from Simenon’s Other Books
Beyond the 13 key books: 13 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
More Maigret (75 novels and 28 stories in all)
2
2 books · 1931–1951
- 1931The Yellow Doga Maigret case in a Breton fishing port, Le Chien jaune
- 1951Maigret’s MemoirsMaigret ‘corrects’ the books Simenon wrote about him
More romans durs (117 in all)
8
8 books · 1933–1965
- 1933The House by the Canala young woman sent to relatives in rural Belgium
- 1940The Strangers in the Housea drunk, reclusive lawyer defends a young man accused of murder
- 1946Three Bedrooms in Manhattana French actor and a woman he meets in New York
- 1947Act of Passiona doctor’s long letter to the examining judge in his case
- 1953Red Lightsa drive across America that goes wrong
- 1958The Premieran old statesman in retirement
- 1961The Traina man separated from his family in the flight of May 1940
- 1965The Little Sainta boy from a Paris market street becomes a painter
Memoirs and autobiography
3
3 books · 1970–1981
- 1970When I Was Oldnotebooks from the 1960s
- 1974Letter to My Motherwritten after his mother’s death
- 1981Intimate Memoirswritten after his daughter’s death in 1978
The years · 1903–1989
Quick facts about Georges Simenon
- Known for
- Inventing Inspector Jules Maigret of the Paris police, and writing, at extraordinary speed, short, bleak psychological novels about ordinary people who break.
- 1903
- Born in Liège, Belgium
- 1945
- Moves to North America for a decade
- 1966
- Grand Master, Mystery Writers of America
- 1989
- Dies in Lausanne, Switzerland
- Born
- 13 February 1903, Liège, Belgium
- Died
- 4 September 1989, Lausanne, Switzerland
- Maigret
- 75 novels and 28 short stories, 1931–1972
- Other novels
- 117 romans durs, plus more than 200 pulp novels under pseudonyms
- Sales
- Over 500 million copies in his lifetime
- Honours
- Grand Master, Mystery Writers of America (1966)
The red mark is 1931: Pietr the Latvian, the first Maigret novel under his own name.
How Georges Simenon Writes: A Chapter a Day
Simenon wrote fast and to a fixed routine: one chapter a day, without a break, so that most novels were finished in ten or eleven days. If he stopped for more than 48 hours, he abandoned the book. He learned the habit in the 1920s, writing over 200 pulp novels in about eight years under pseudonyms, before he put his own name on a book.
His style is deliberately plain. Early in his career Colette, then literary editor of Le Matin, told him to cut his writing back, and he took out the “literary” words, keeping a small, concrete vocabulary: weather, smells, rooms, food. “I am not interested in the story. Only the characters matter,” he told The New York Times. The plots are simple; what moves the books is a character at the moment he crosses a line.
The Maigret novels and the romans durs are two sides of the same interest. Maigret solves cases by understanding the people involved rather than by clues, and he rarely judges them. The hard novels take away the detective: Kees Popinga, Frank Friedmaier and Monsieur Monde go over the edge with nobody coming to understand them. That bleakness is why Simenon is read as much as a literary novelist as a crime writer.
Frequently asked questions about Georges Simenon’s books
How many books has Georges Simenon written?
Hundreds, depending on how you count. Under his own name he published 192 novels: 75 Maigret novels and 117 romans durs. There are also 28 Maigret short stories, more than 200 pulp novels written under pseudonyms in the 1920s and early 1930s, and several volumes of memoirs. This page covers 13 key books and a selection of the rest.
What are Georges Simenon’s books in order?
The key books are Pietr the Latvian (1931), The Night at the Crossroads (1931), Mr Hire’s Engagement (1933), Tropic Moon (1933), The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (1938), The Widow (1942), Monsieur Monde Vanishes (1945), Pedigree (1948), Dirty Snow (1948), Maigret Sets a Trap (1955), The Blue Room (1964), The Cat (1967) and Maigret and Monsieur Charles (1972).
Where should I start with Georges Simenon?
With Pietr the Latvian (1931), the first Maigret novel, if you want the detective. If you want the darker novels, start with The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (1938). Both are short enough to read in an evening or two.
What is Georges Simenon’s most famous book?
His most famous creation is Inspector Maigret rather than a single book. Among the Maigrets, Pietr the Latvian is the best known as the first; among the romans durs, The Man Who Watched Trains Go By and Dirty Snow are the most often recommended.
In what order should I read the Maigret books?
Any order works: each novel is a separate case, and Maigret hardly changes. If you want to read many, follow publication order, from Pietr the Latvian (1931) to Maigret and Monsieur Charles (1972). Penguin published new English translations of all 75 in that order between 2013 and 2020.
What are Simenon’s romans durs?
“Hard novels”: the name Simenon gave to his 117 non-Maigret novels. They are short psychological novels, usually about an ordinary man or woman who breaks out of a settled life, often into crime, with no detective to make sense of it. Mr Hire’s Engagement, The Man Who Watched Trains Go By, Dirty Snow and The Cat are among the best known.
Which Simenon books have been filmed?
Many. Among those on this page: The Night at the Crossroads (Jean Renoir, 1932), Mr Hire’s Engagement (as Panique, 1946, and Monsieur Hire, 1989), Maigret Sets a Trap (1958, with Jean Gabin), The Widow and The Cat (both 1971, with Simone Signoret) and The Blue Room (2014). Maigret has also been played on television many times.
Was Georges Simenon a collaborator?
He was accused of it. During the German occupation of France he lived in the Vendée and sold film rights to German-controlled film companies; the 1942 film of Les Inconnus dans la maison was shown with an antisemitic propaganda short. After the Liberation he was arrested at the end of January 1945 and cleared and released in May 1945, and he left for North America that year. His private life also drew attention: in a 1977 interview with Federico Fellini he claimed to have had 10,000 women.
Is Georges Simenon still alive?
No. He was born on 13 February 1903 in Liège, Belgium, and died on 4 September 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland. He stopped writing novels in 1972, but went on dictating memoirs until the early 1980s.
Footnotes
- Georges Simenon — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Georges Simenon bibliography — Wikipedia
- How Georges Simenon and Maigret reinvented the detective novel — Penguin
- Penguin Press celebrates 75th Maigret translation — The Bookseller, 2019
- Hardness: Simenon’s romans durs — The New Republic
- Simenon in the war — maigret.de
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness.”
— Georges Simenon, interviewed by Carvel Collins, The Paris Review, The Art of Fiction No. 9 (1955)
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