Detective novelist Georges Simenon, creator of the sleuth Inspector Maigret and perhaps the century's most widely read author, died Monday at his Swiss home, it was announced Wednesday. He was 86.
The writer had been ailing for some time. The cause of death was not immediately known, but a spokeswoman at his Lausanne office said Simenon died peacefully.A Belgian native, Simenon wrote 80 books featuring Maigret, the compassionate pipe-smoking Paris chief inspector who seeks to understand criminals rather than condemn them.
While best known for the immensely popular "Maigrets," he personally preferred the 132 "non-Maigrets," psychological, sometimes nightmarish novels about people in crisis that put his name into literary encyclopedias.
His books were translated into 55 languages, including Chinese, Armenian and Yiddish, in 40 countries.