Even on the seaside, supposedly on vacation, Maigret remains a policeman—his keen eye missing not even the smallest detail. One might expect him to relax, sip wine, sleep in, and stroll through the streets... but a chance glance, a puzzling note, or a passing word is enough to turn everything upside down.

Maigret’s holiday is disrupted from the very first day when his wife falls ill. What first seems to be simple food poisoning turns out to be appendicitis. The local hospital has an unusual atmosphere: the nurses are nuns, everything appears orderly, the “dear patients” recover... yet, sadly, not all of them.

One day, a nun slips a note into Maigret’s pocket. It reads: “For God’s sake, have mercy—demand to see the patient in Room 15.” The next day, Hélène Godreau, a young woman from Room 15, dies from a fractured skull. Her death was neither the first nor the last, and the truth would have remained hidden—if not for Maigret’s persistence.

The Belgian author Georges Simenon, a world-renowned master of the psychological detective genre, is one of the most widely read authors of the 20th century. Over the course of 43 years, he published 425 books—200 under 16 pseudonyms, and 220 under his own name. Simenon wrote 75 novels and 28 short stories about Inspector Maigret. By number of translations, he ranks 19th worldwide: his works have been published in 55 languages across 39 countries.