12 JULY 1957, Page 32

Maigret Goes to School. By Simenon. (Hamish Hamilton, 10s. 6d.)

What new can be said of the Master himself? His mackintoshed sage goes down to oyster country on Atlantic coast and solves murder mystery by thinking himself back into his own schooldays. No novelist of any kind gets sights, smells and sounds of provincial France so economically into written word.