“There is a case to be made that Maigret’s life was a projection of a fantasy of Simenon’s: returning each night to a stable domestic environment, having mastered the demons beyond. He certainly took pains to look like Maigret, with his soft-brimmed fedora and his ever-present pipe.” Georges Simenon provides more fodder than most for the charge that his writing drew heavily from autobiography. He was clearly a man of taste, as this passage demonstrates: “Here is, without question, the world’s most famous butt, and the most desired… its firm, sweet contours, its lascivious quivers and wild convulsions. A being apart with a life of its own.” The derriere in question belonged to Josephine Baker; the Babu thinks that Simenon’s immortal words could well be applied to the far more contemporary rear of Kylie Monogue.