Book excerpt: When a man traveling abroad is murdered in his hotel room, Inspector Maigret must sift through the misdirection and betrayal to find the truth hidden beneath. A Monsieur Gallet has been found dead—murdered—in his hotel room, in a small town outside of Paris. In Georges Simenon’s The Late Monsieur Gallet, Inspector Maigret sets off to figure out the course of events that led to this grim outcome. But as he delves deeper, the circumstances of the crime become increasingly intriguing: Gallet’s alias, his sickly pallor, his claimed profession, his wife’s and son’s strangely indifferent behavior in the wake of Gallet’s death. Using all his wits and intuition, Maigret must look beyond not-so-random coincidences and layers of deception to uncover the truth of the crime.