"One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequaled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories." --The Guardian

Inspector Maigret steps in when an anonymous note to the police reports that a body has been burned in a bookbinder's furnace

An anonymous note to the police reports that a body has been burned in the furnace of a bookbinder on the Rue de Turenne. Preliminary investigations turn up suspicious details--and two human teeth of a man who'd been alive not long before. Meanwhile, Madame Maigret has had a strange experience while waiting for her dentist appointment. A woman she had often met on the bench while waiting suddenly leaves her young child in Madame Maigret's care and disappears for over an hour, returning to take the child and vanishing without explanation. When Maigret's investigation is blown wide open, it seems the two incidents might be related in ways no one could have predicted.