This was a rather meandering story, and I didn’t end up caring much about the titular corpse. For a while, only an arm and a leg had been retrieved, so calling it a “headless” corpse didn’t feel entirely accurate; I picture a headless corpse as a body that is missing only the head. I also spent much of the book being pissed off about the attitude of the police officers toward the situation. They seemed astonished that the arm belonged to a man—“normally,” dismembered bodies in the canal in question belonged to women, and “nine times out of ten”, the woman in question was a prostitute. The fact that they treated this so casually and didn’t seem to be thinking “hmmm maybe we should stop people from killing and dismembering prostitutes” was infuriating. And then there was the notary who showed up conveniently at the end of the story to explain what Maigret couldn’t know—notary and Maigret went out for lots of drinks and notary ended up picking up a woman who was not his wife, and Maigret was like “oh ok whatever”.

Honestly, my favourite characters were Madame Maigret and the cat. ( )

When various body parts, but no head, are retrieved from the Seine, Maigret and his team must first identify the victim. Serendipity leads him to a small bistro to use a telephone, but it turns out that the key to solving the crime rests in that very bistro. ( )

Pieces of a man's body ensnared in the prop of a barge brings Maigret to an enigmatic woman and a family of very unconnected people. Mrs Maigret quietly emotes patience and sympathy as the case torments Maigret until he unseals its secrets. ( )

This is one of the Maigret novels that demonstrates quite clearly how timeless an author Simenon was.
The discovery of body pieces without a head, thus making identification very difficult, is a scenario explored by a number of crime fiction authors since.
It is a case just made for Maigret who worries tenaciously at identifying the corpse, and once he thinks he has that nailed, takes the focus to who killed him and why.
Another theme that emerges, that we tend to see frequently in more modern novels, is how the case takes over Maigret's thinking, and indeed his whole life. It serves to illustrate what a special person Madame Maigret is, in that this doesn't cause a marriage breakdown, but instead evokes a sort of sympathy from her, as she realises he is even eating without tasting.

THE HEADLESS CORPSE illustrates how, like Sherlock Holmes in many ways, Maigret can assemble minute observations and then make an intuitive leap that generates a bigger question. ( )

Als Robert en Jules Naud hun schip 'De twee gebroeders' niet op gang krijgen, blijkt de arm van een man in de schroef van het schip daar de oorzaak van te zijn. Er worden wel vaker al of niet complete lijken uit de Seine opgevist, maar dat betreft dan meestal vrouwen. Als de rest van het lichaam, met uitzondering van het hoofd, gevonden is, leidt het spoor naar de echtgenote van de vermoorde en haar zachtaardige minnaar, beiden geen potentiële moordenaars. Centraal in deze detective staat het bijna woordeloze contact dat Maigret opbouwt met de mysterieuze, ongrijpbare echtgenote die zich op een goede dag, vanuit haar welvarende, maar troosteloze achtergrond in de armen stortte van de vermoorde kroegbaas Calas. Pocketeditie ter gelegenheid van de 100e geboortedag van de Belgische schrijver van detectives en psychologische romans. De boeken zijn opnieuw vertaald en vormgegeven met klassieke fotografie van het Parijs uit Simenons gloriejaren. - Redactie