Drops of Stearin

Georges Simenon wrote a chapter into the history of twentieth-century detective fiction without which that history not only appears incomplete, but even risks losing its coherence and meaning altogether.
Speaking of Simenon, people usually mention first of all his literary records. He can indeed lay claim to the title of the most widely read French-language author of the twentieth century; he wrote more than two hundred novels between 1929 and 1972. His books were translated into many languages of the world, including Esperanto. The image of Police Commissioner Maigret, born of his imagination, took a highly honorable place in the gallery of Great Detectives, capable in popularity of competing with Sherlock Holmes himself.
Georges Simenon wrote novel after novel, telling simple stories in which there were neither knights nor villains, but ordinary French people who, by force of circumstance, found themselves in serious trouble. Like his predecessor Father Brown, Commissioner Maigret might well have said: I do not look at a man from the outside. I try to penetrate within.