Cécile Esperou

Sylvie Drapier is an attractive 40-year old surgeon, specializing in liver transplants, who heads a department in the foremost clinic of a small country town. Divorced, she lives alone with her eight-year-old son, David. One night, returning home from a major operation, Sylvie is violently assaulted and raped in the garage of her building. In the furious struggle with the rapist, she manages to scratch him with a brooch. Several weeks later, the rapist attacks a pharmacist, but this time, the victim escapes by severely injuring him. The assaulter is hospitalized and must undergo a liver transplant, an operation which only Sylvie Drapier can perform...

The pragmatic, reserved and refined Maigret investigates murders in his singular unhurried manner and inevitably discovers the truth.