"Both the Maigret books and his standalone romans durs . . . are a joy. What they have in common is crisp, economical prose, unexpected emotional depth and a strange sense of modernity." —Andrew Taylor

Nearly two years into his police retirement, Maigret has turned down all offers of private detective work—until, during a broiling hot August, the teenage daughter of a wealthy family is found drowned in the Seine. According to her grandmother, the imperious Bernadette Amorelle, it was neither an accident nor a suicide. The former inspector must, she insists, abandon his garden and accompany her to the affluent hamlet of Orsenne.
Maigret is ill at ease in the cloistered milieu of manicured lawns, yachts, and swimming pools. Seeing the strained dynamic among the dead girl's relatives, his disquiet grows. Why is a sixteen-year-old boy, her cousin, kept locked up? And why does Bernadette loathe her son-in-law, a board director of all the family companies, with such passion? In this gothic-tinged Machiavellian tragedy, Maigret is unflinching in his quest for answers—even if they blacken his view of humanity more than he'd thought possible.