Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses is one of the novellas I included in my Novellas in November post. It has 172 pages and is Simenon’s 53rd Inspector Maigret book, first published in 1959.

It begins:

‘You haven’t forgotten your umbrella, have you?’

‘No.’

The door was about to shut, and Maigret was already turning towards the stairs.

‘You’d better wear your scarf.’

His wife ran to get it unaware that this little remark would leave him out of sorts for some time, melancholy thoughts churning through his brain.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice. *Grab a book, any book. *Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your  ereader . If you have to improvise, that is okay. *Find a snippet, short and sweet, but no spoilers!

1. Grab a book, any book.
2. Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
3. Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
4. Post it.
5. Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

Page 56:

My job is to look for the truth, and that is what I’m doing. Your presence in fact would incline me not to look very far, because it’s very unusual for the relatives of a murder victim to send for a lawyer before they can even be questioned by the police.

Blurb:

When the head of a powerful Parisian family business is murdered in his bed, Maigret must pick apart the family’s darkest secrets to reveal the truth.

“The curious thing was that there seemed to be no grief here, only a strange dejection, a kind of uneasy stupor…”

Maigret is called to the home of the high-profile Lachaume family where the eldest brother has been found shot dead. But on his arrival, the family closes ranks and claims to have heard and seen nothing at the time of the murder. Maigret must pick his way through the family’s web of lies, secrets, and deceit, as well as handle Angelot, a troublesome new breed of magistrate who has waded into the case. And it’s the estranged black sheep of the family, Veronique, who may hold the key to it all with her knowledge of the depths to which the family will sink to protect their reputation.