Continuing to work my way through the 72 Maigret novels which I keep on several shelves in my Vermont library, I realized with a shock that I didn’t own this particular book.  So buying it on line to complete my collection, I turned to reading it with some trepidation given its title.

Simenon seems to do best with straight-up, Paris-based crime stories in which Maigret is free to fully utilize his method of burrowing deeply into the character of the main players, deducing the perpetrator’s actions without the traditional police techniques of forensics, fingerprints, etc.  The appearance of his long-suffering, quiet, and usually obscure wife in the title made me skeptical about this volume, but it turned out to be a good one.

The book has two parallel plots which come together nicely as the book proceeds.  First, there’s Madame Maigret waiting on the park bench for her dental appointment and finding herself left watching a 2 year old boy after his mother disappears for several hours.  Second, we have Maigret facing an anonymous note that a body had been burned at a bookbinder’s workshop near Place Voges.  Turns out that Madame Maigret’s disappearing mother is in league with the bad guys who murdered and disposed of the nephew of a rich Countess whom they also bumped off.

Not one of his best but better by far than some of the others.