Maigret and the Yellow Dog

First one of the town's leading citizens is shot in the stomach in a doorway. Then his friends still inside the café barely escape being poisoned. Maigret shows his usual distain for evidence and deduction. He's more intrigued by the yellow dog wandering around the scene of the crimes - and the poignant face of the young barmaid who sleeps around a bit. More incidents occur. The reporters swarming all over the hotel seem to know more about the crime wave than the police! Maigret's flair for inaction, and his sensitivity to atmosphere, are nicely portrayed in this book.

This is a riviting story. This book is in french not spanish as stated here. Could not put it down.

Those of you who are also readers of Ed McBain, will notice the similarity to his books. In this story we get a new feel for Maigret who is a Superintendent in this one, and is once again at his very annoying best. It's always a pleasure to read how Simenon loved to 'stick it' to the Provinciales in between the wars France. He loved to open the door on their pomposity and their groping for status. The story is pretty straight forward, but it's the way that Maigret goes about what he does that is so much fun. While everyone is watching his every move, including a good portion of the Paris national press, he goes about as if he doesn't care. Smiling at everyone and puffing on his pipe he is the archetypical civil servant in no hurry to finish his work. Meanwhile the Mayor is spending all his time trying to protect the good name of his Town. The ending is almost 'Hercules Pirot' in style, with everyone of the candidates brought together in the Police Barracks at the end to hear Maigret deductions. More than anything there is a decision by Maigret to protect two of the characters who are then left to go on with their lives, as McBain does in many of his stories.

Even if you dislike police novels, you have to read Maigret's novels (and others Simenon's non Maigret novels) because of the humanism and psychology in these novels. And more over, you have the pleasure to dive in the Simenon's atmosphere : close to impressionism (only few words to restitute an impression ...).This novel, in particularly, is a good example of Simenon's art.

If I was to initiate anyone into the world of Superintendant Jules Maigret, 1931's 'The Yellow Dog' (a.k.a. 'Face for a Clue') is the book I would recommend. The story is set in the Breton harbour town of Concarneau, and begins with the non-fatal shooting of a prominent citizen one stormy night. His friends, card-playing regulars in the Admiral Hotel cafe, fear they will be next, and sure enough strychnine is soon found in their pernods. Escalating fear in the town is accompanied by a mysterious giant's footsteps and a yellow dog always present at the crime scenes. The Mayor who has sent for Maigret becomes exasperated when the policeman seems casually indifferent to the case, allowing further crimes to occur.'Yellow Dog' is model Maigret for a number of reasons. It crystallises the Maigret detective method, rejecting Holmesian deduction or modish scientific procedures, the Inspector preferring to silently absorb the atmosphere of a place, the charactetrs and faces of its people. The progress Maigret makes with this infinite patience he keeps to himself, exasperating superiors, colleagues, citizens, even the reader. In these books, crime isn't static, a thing of the past to be frozen and endlessly analysed, as in Agatha Christie et al, but a fluid, ongoing part of the social fabric. The book introduces the young Inspector Leroy, who, throughout the series will become Maigret's most trusted ally. The narrative plays variations on Simenon's favourite themes, most especially the different levels of vice and transgression in French communities, hypocritically categorised by class. His charting the development of public fear into the violence of mob panic is terrifying and prescient.But 'Yellow Dog' is especially notable for the clarity of what one might term Simenon's tripartite characterisation. First of all, there are the actual human characters, whom Maigret observes, and generously allows the freedom to reveal or hang themselves in their own words, waiting for them to play their petty charades and deceits, before breaking down to the truth. Though Simenon can be sentimental, on the whole, they are not a pretty bunch. Secondly, the meticulous evocation of place, with the vivid description of the harbour; the town divided into the Old, with its ancient, narrow, winding streets, and New, with its markets, gaudy hotels and the ever-recurring clock; the dingy tavern with its oppressive, aquarium-like windows; the persistant presence of dirt and trash, visible emblems of barely concealed social rottenness. And thirdly, the presence of the weather, mostly dark, windswept, beating rain, but breaking into festive plays of light. The story begins with a brilliantly atmospheric, cinematic panorama of the empty town in which the crime is almost incidental; the most forceful set-piece is literally cinematic, as Maigret and Leroy shiver on a roof, spectators looking down through a window-'screen' at a silent lovers' drama they can only partly co