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Sherlock and Poirot are great detective genres. I'm not sure if they really have parallels.

The French people however love their Inspector Maigret (by Georges Simenon). The Maigret books are apparently some of the best selling books in the Francophone world of all time. Inspector Maigret however is more procedural, and doesn't go for climatic reveals and does not have the flawed omniscient genius character that most of us are instinctively attracted to.

On the opposite end of spectrum, you might enjoy Arsene Lupin (by Maurice Leblanc), a gentleman-thief.




I’ve been gradually working through producing the Arsène Lupin stories and they’re fabulous, especially when you include his relations to Herlock Sholmes :) Libre Arsène ebooks I’ve produced so far (the remaining PD corpus is gradually following):

The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/maurice-leblanc/the-extrao...

Arsène Lupin Versus Herlock Sholmes

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/maurice-leblanc/arsene-lup...

The Hollow Needle

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/maurice-leblanc/the-hollow...

813

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/maurice-leblanc/813/alexan...

The Crystal Stopper

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/maurice-leblanc/the-crysta...


I would say that Maigret is a kind of psychological detective : even if there are clues and detective work, his main characteristic is that he tries to get to the bottom of the personnalities he encounters, what motives drive the criminal and who they really are, so he is more concerned about the "why" than the "how".


> Inspector Maigret

Maigret books are really great time-fillers: there's a large number of them, they are short and self-contained, and I've yet to read a bad one.




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