Maigret and the Yellow Dog

I was not familiar with Belgian writer Georges Simenon or his fictional detective Jules Maigret until recently when a Facebook friend posted that he had just finished listening to an audio book of Simenon's Maigret and the Yellow Dog. Of course, I had to do a web search.

I learned that Simenon had published 75 mystery novels and 28 short stories featuring his police commissioner.

I found a copy of Maigret and the Yellow Dog as mobi, and put it to the queue of books to read this month.

Naturally, I couldn't help by mentally compare Maigret with Agatha Christie's Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. It isn't, however, a fair comparison. I enjoyed the story....enough to download the entire 75 novel collection. Unfortunately, I'm unable to read these mystery novels in the original French, so I'm forced to read English translations. When reading Christie, I'm reading a master of the English language. Simenon's story is top notch, but being a translation, the words don't flow with the same smoothness as in Christie's novels. That's not a criticism of Simenon or his mystery novels......this is my weakness, not his. 

This particular novel is #6 in the Maigret canon. I'll eventually get around to reading #1, Pietr the Latvian but not this month. I've still books by other writers in the queue.