Doctor Maigret

Everyone thought Jules Maigret was going to live forever. All of a sudden, the great detective’s dead. A premeditated poisoning is suspected. Who did it?

Everyone thought Jules Maigret was going to live forever. All of a sudden, the great detective’s dead. A premeditated poisoning is suspected. Who did it? Commissioner Maigret reappears much older and more difficult than ever to discover cancer is gnawing his life away. He responds in an unexpected way by tapping a unique resource: the knowledge of medicine he continued to acquire throughout his career after leaving medical school and entering the police world. Maigret contemplates his fate in secret, which transforms him into a better man, but he becomes a dead man, too. It’s a matter of poisoning, in his own home, during his birthday celebration, surrounded by handpicked guests. Although several are angry with him, including two resentful colleagues, a jealous rival, and the writer who is fed up with his famous protagonist, there is no apparent murderer. Is it the perfect crime?

A New England native, David studied at Exeter Academy, Yale College, and the Yale School of Medicine. After completing surgical residencies at the University of Michigan and Harvard, he practiced orthopaedics in the Boston area. Once retired in 1999, David started writing fiction, spending whatever was left of his time reading French, sculpting wood, and photographing nature. After producing two murder mysteries in English, The Sum of Her Parts and No End of Guilty Creatures, he switched to writing in French. The first product was Le Docteur Maigret, a novel that transformed the famous detective, Jules Maigret, the superstar of 103 stories by Georges Simenon, into a different man. The fact that Maigret attended medical school for two years, continued to read medical articles and textbooks throughout his police career, and used that knowledge during his investigations was crucial to this work. So a doctor like David was ideally prepared to construct an original story about the detective’s fate. Translating the novel into English was the logical next step and a new adventure. Doctor Maigret was the result. Most importantly, David’s wife, three daughters, three sons-in-law, six grandchildren and dog forever delight him where he now lives in Annisquam, Massachusetts.