Maigret's Rival; Witness Before the Fact; The Lake of Darkness by Simenon, Georges; Ferrars, E. X.; Rendell, Ruth - 1980

The Detective Book Club produced volumes of three crime novels from 1942 to 1999. Originally monthly, near the end they dwindled down to just a few per year. Many famous detective and crime novelists had their early works featured in DBC editions. Often, books were published in DBC editions before, or at the same time as they were published in mass market form. A little about our authors:

Georges Simenon: The Belgian writer is well known for creating the character Inspector Maigret, who appeared in 75 stories. Simenon also published over 110 stand-alone novels. As a sign of his importance in the literary world, Simenon has been the subject of books written by six other authors. This is the twenty-fifth Maigret novel.

E. X. Ferrars: During her career, Ferrars published over 70 novels, mostly as stand-alones. Her longest series were the Virginia Freer and Andrew Basnett series, each with eight volumes. This is novel #2 of 2 featuring Police Chief Raposo.

Ruth Rendell: A rather prolific writer, Rendell created the character Chief Inspector Wexford for a 24 volume series. She also published 30 stand alone novels of mystery and crime under her own name and another fifteen under the pen name of Barbara Vine. As if 69 novels wasn't enough, Rendell also published sixteen collections of her short stories and novellas and contributed to many other anthologies as well. Rendell died in 2015.