What distinguishes the Maigret stories of Georges Simenon (19031989) (1) from the detective fiction of authors like Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle is their attention to the humanity of both the investigator and the investigated. Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Christie's Poirot are essentially problem solvers, "pure logicians of time and space," as Michel Sirvent calls them (Merivale and Sweeny 165). "[hough Maigret can be as meticulous and persistent in his search for clues as any other detective, he ultimately resolves crimes by entering the humanity of the criminals he pursues, more interested in solving the mystery of broken lives than in finding the perpetrators of crimes. "There are no great feats of ratiocination" in the Maigret stories, "and the problems they present are human as much as they are criminal" (Symons 150). Commentators have recognized this deeply human character of Simenon's Maigret, but they have not noticed a fundamental paradox: though Maigret is, like his creator, a thoroughly secular man in his personal beliefs, he manifests a profoundly Christian, even priestly character in his approach to solving crimes. I will examine several stories that explicitly manifest the priestly vocation of Maigret and certain traits that seem best described as Christian. Maigret's Vocation
