just as i was reading fred vargas’s a certain place (which opens with the french police in london) i find that there is a maigret production on radio (with nicholas le provost as maigret and julian barnes as “simenon”) and the particular episode they had on was my friend maigret, the one with the scotland yard detective, inspector pike, in france to study maigret’s methods. the casual thrill of a trivial, accidental chiasmus.