Both writers have an international orientation, with their characters coming from all over Europe, and their detectives solving international crimes. Both study physical clues, and make deductions from evidence left behind at crime scenes. Both detectives are married, and discuss their work with their patient wives. Both have to use considerable tact to deal with difficult suspects. While Simenon's works reflect Crofts' in their detective work, characters, and social background, their plotting technique does not completely follow the standard interests of the British realists.
Physician detectives are part of the traditions of the realist school.
The careful account of Simenon's characters' financial status and activities, also reminds one of such British realist writers as Crofts and, especially, Henry Wade. Simenon's characters are often middle class, just as in the realists. Simenon's non-mystery works in which guilty people are psychologically pursued by their crimes perhaps owe something to the inverted detective stories of which the British realists were so fond. The gloomy, downbeat tone of some of Simenon's work also reflects the tragic tone of much British realist writing. Many of Maigret's interviews with suspects are essentially psychological portraits of the characters in the book.