La trilogie des 13

The complete trilogy of the "13", in first edition, each volume one of 50 copies on pur fil paper, the only deluxe issue (cf. Claude Menguy). The limitation is mistakenly given as printed on "alfa"  halfway down the spine, though the copies are in fact printed on pur fil Lafuma (no copies were issued on alfa). The plain white wrappers were reserved for the large-paper copies; the photographic wrappers were used only for the trade issue.

Rare and handsome copies of each volume of the "13" trilogy, from the limited first issue. With their method of investigation grounded in observation and human behavior, these collections of short stories foreshadow the future great cases of Inspector Maigret.

Illustrated with staged photographs by J. Constantinesco.

The three volumes are housed in a black half-morocco clamshell box. The spine bears the author’s name and the collective title stamped in palladium, and each volume’s title is lettered in palladium along the spine. The boards are covered in handmade paper with a geometric design, the pastedowns are in anthracite sheepskin, and the inner walls are lined with black book cloth. A charming custom design signed by Boichot. 

Before Inspector Maigret made his first appearance in print, Simenon had created several detective figures under the pseudonym Georges Sim, among them Inspector G.7.

Les treize énigmes, which features him, first appeared in the weekly Détective from 12 September to 19 December 1929. The stories were presented as a competition, and readers were invited to solve each puzzle before its solution was published. Fayard collected them in 1932, together with Les 13 coupables and Les 13 mystères.

Les 13 coupables features the examining magistrate Froget, a stern and impassive figure who exposes the accused through interrogation alone and never leaves his office. Simenon was then devising several investigators before he created Maigret. Froget is one of the most fully realised of them, and his quiet perspicacity already anticipates the method of the future inspector. Simenon wrote these thirteen stories aboard the Ostrogoth, the barge on which he was then living, at Stavoren in the Netherlands, during the winter of 1929-1930. They were serialised in the weekly Détective in the first half of 1930, under the pseudonym Georges Sim.

Les 13 mystères collects the cases of Joseph Leborgne, a sedentary detective who solves crimes without leaving his hotel room.

The set won particular critical acclaim across the Atlantic. The American critic Alexander Woollcott regarded it as a veritable ideal library of the puzzle story. This verdict later earned Les 13 coupables a place in the canon of Ellery Queen’s Queen’s Quorum (1951), where it ranks 85th, alongside the classics of the genre. That recognition explains why this volume is the only one of the Fayard triptych ever to have been translated into English. 

The photographic illustrations in these volumes are the work of a now largely forgotten photographer, J. Constantinesco, probably of Romanian origin. A 2018 article in the Cahiers du Musée national d’art moderne documents his staged photographs for Simenon, with particular reference to Les 13 mystères. According to that article, these images prefigure the more systematic use of photography that Simenon would later make in his work with André Vigneau. Each week, an enigmatic photograph was published alongside the text, and readers had to work out the solution before it appeared, with prizes to be won. 

Fine deluxe copies of these rare Simenon titles. They stand at the turning point between the author’s earliest detective fiction and his experiments with photography, using press photography into his detective stories for the first time.