Maigret didn't always want to be a policeman. Early on, his life was profoundly influenced by Dr. Gadelle, a country physician and friend of his father. Maigret actually decided to become a doctor, and studied medicine for two years but when his father suddenly died of pleurisy he was forced to give up his studies and look for a paying job. Maigret went to Paris to find work, where a police official living in the same small hotel befriended him. The young Maigret, fascinated by the dark mysteries of human character, decided that he would become a ‘doctor of destinies’ if not of medicine. The detection of crime seemed the path to such a profession, and when his new friend offered the opportunity he accepted a job on the Paris police force.

He served his plainclothes apprenticeship catching shoplifters with the department store squad and fugitives with the railway station squad, spotting pickpockets with the public highways squad, rounding up prostitutes and assorted shady characters with the vice and hotels squads. He came to know Paris from end to end and learned to love all its moods, tramping its streets in rain and snow in his velvet-collared overcoat and bowler hat, enjoying the limpid sunshine, sitting in crowded sidewalk cafes when the chestnut trees were in bloom and his feet hurt in the new shoes that he bought each year on the first spring day.

Maigret was an idealistic novice when his first proper case (Maigret’s First Case) led him into the realms of privilege and nearly ended his career before it had begun. He was 22, the precinct secretary in the elegant Saint-Georges district of the city, when he investigated a midnight call for help from one of the great mansions. He found no corpse, nor any sign of a struggle, and the son of the family who showed the young detective through the house sarcastically commended him for his zeal. The youthful Maigret solved the case of the heiress and her slain lover on his own, but the scandalous truth had to be suppressed. Maigret, almost resigned in indignation but he was offered his dream on a plate -  a transfer to headquarters and the homicide squad - and decided to accept it. He has remained there ever since, rising through the ranks to become the world-renowned and respected Chief Inspector Maigret.