Inspector Lognon - an embittered but dedicated detective - is shot. To everyone's amazement, it emerges that Lognon had spent the last ten nights in the room of a beautiful young woman - who has disappeared. In retreading Lognon's secretive last days, Maigret's investigations lead him into both the murky world of art-collecting and forgery, and the obsessive mind of a detective. 'A truly wonderful writer . .. marvellously readable - lucid, simple, absolutely in tune with that world he creates of run-down hotels, cold, dark barges, quayside canal-taverns, lurking prostitutes, pot-bellied burghers, taciturn youths, slippery barmen' - Muriel Spark, "Sunday Times".