There are stamps of Inspector Maigret with his pipe.

But I must admit Paris is a blind spot with me, since I have yet to discover a more agreeable companion than Inspector Maigret.

A sober, dispassionate, historically informed life of the nasty, opportunistic, priapically extravagant creator of Inspector Maigret and of several hundred novels.

For instance, Georges Simenon's Inspector Maigret goes after the criminals, but refuses to judge them, seeing crime as a human situation to be understood.

Like Simenon's Inspector Maigret, the marshal impresses us as a watchful, thoughtful man who is wise enough to learn from whatever he sees of human nature.

Here was no case that might have required the sleuthing services of Hercule Poirot or Inspector Maigret.

And then there is, perhaps most poignantly, Inspector Maigret, puffing meditatively on his pipe and saddened to his soul by the perversities of human nature.

He gave them Inspector Maigret, 84 times, and he gave them something else as well: Paris.

There is a genre that shows the police as brave and worthy of trust, like Inspector Maigret.

Are we going to ban the reading of Simenon on grounds that Inspector Maigret with his pipe is a bad example to young people?