Maigret and the yellow dog
Maigret and the Yellow Dog (in the original: Le chien jaune ) is a crime novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon , which was published in 1931. It is the 6th novel in the Maigret series.
action
In the small town of Concarneau in Brittany , a series of violent crimes and attempts at intimidation frighten the population. When the wine merchant Mostaguen went home late at night from the round table of notables in Café l'Amiral , he was shot. Shortly after the arrival of Commissioner Maigret , who had previously been transferred to the mobile brigade of the National Gendarmerie in Rennes , someone tried to poison the rest of the regulars with strychnine dissolved in Pernod . The public panic due to the disappearance of journalist Servieres and the poisoning of another member of the card group.
Maigret comes across an accumulation of strange traces: In Dr. Michoux, a member of the dignitaries, finds a number of empty tins and champagne bottles , but most of all, traces of size 46 boots appear around the crime scenes. Various eyewitnesses claim to have seen a yellow dog that nobody knows everywhere in the vicinity of the crime.
An actress' divination to Dr. Michoux five years earlier that he should watch out for the "yellow dog" has been given new weight. Now he decides to make a statement that suddenly lets the dignitaries appear in a new light. But Maigret can only catch the "giant" with his yellow dog when he reconsiders the insignificant statement made by a domestic worker and realizes that the first poison attack was just a diversionary maneuver.
expenditure
- Georges Simenon: Le chien jaune . Fayard, Paris 1931
- Georges Simenon: Maigret and the yellow dog . Translation: Isolde Kolbenhoff, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne / Berlin 1958
- Georges Simenon: Maigret and the yellow dog . Translation: Raymond Regh, Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1979, ISBN 978-3257206913
review
“Maigret doesn't seem happy when he comes to the port city, and not unhappy when he leaves again: We learn that whoever has rank and name there is defeated with an extremely lax morality. It goes without saying that we are lagging behind the inspector's weather for a long time, and also that the dog turns out to be a furious distraction maneuver, for which he almost has to believe, because the population is only too happy to be scared of the big yellow animal. Maigret's eternal sentimentality, however, his empathy with the real victims and his will to bring them justice to the point of bending the law, is also evident here: In the end the real heroine is pregnant, the real hero sails away with her ”.
Radio play editing
In 1961, Bayerischer Rundfunk adapted the book as a radio play of the same name (director: Heinz-Günter Stamm , arranger: Gert Westphal , translation: Harold Effberg) with Paul Dahlke in the title role. Other well-known speakers were Traute Rose , Rolf Boysen , Eva L'Arronge , Klausjürgen Wussow , Erik Schumann , Karl Lieffen , Lina Carstens and Benno Sterzenbach . (see Der Audio Verlag , edition: special edition 2005, ISBN 978-3898133906 )
Two years earlier, Südwestfunk had already completed a radio play, for which Westphal had also taken over the editing and even the direction. Here Leonhard Steckel spoke the title role and Hans-Helmut Dickow the Dr. Michoux. Other speakers included Wolfgang Forester , Kurt Ebbinghaus , Kurt Lieck , Andreas Dahlmeyer and Ursula Langrock . This version is available from the SWF, but not commercially available on a phonogram.
In 2006, Diogenes Verlag also published an audio book version with Friedhelm Ptok as the narrator ( ISBN 978-3257800401 ).
filming
The French television companies Antenne 2 and ORTF shot this episode in their series Les enquêtes du commissaire Maigret in 1967 under the direction of Claude Barma as the third part with the original title Le chien jaune (first broadcast: February 24, 1968). The title role was taken by Jean Richard.