The Shadow in the Courtyard

The Shadow in the Courtyard (other English-language titles are Maigret Mystified and The Shadow Puppet; French: L'Ombre chinoise) is a detective novel by Belgian writer Georges Simenon, featuring his character inspector Jules Maigret. The novel was written in Antibes in December 1931 and was published a month later, in January 1932, by the Parisian publishing house Fayard.^[1]

The Shadow in the Courtyard

Author	Georges Simenon
Original title	French: L'Ombre chinoise
Language	French
Series	Inspector Jules Maigret
Genre	Detective fiction, Crime fiction
Publisher	Fayard
Publication date	1932
Publication place	Belgium
Published in English	1934
Media type	Print
Preceded by	Guinguette by the Seine
Followed by	Maigret Goes Home

Translations

The book has been translated three times into English: in 1934 by Anthony Abbot as The Shadow in the Courtyard , in 1964 as Maigret Mystified by Jean Stewart, and in 2015 by Ros Schwartz as The Shadow Puppet.^[2]

The first German translation by Milo Dor and Reinhard Federmann was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in 1959. The new translation by Claus Sprick was published by Diogenes Verlag in 1982.^[3]

Adaptations

The novel has been adapted five times for film and television: in Italian in 2004 as L'ombra cinese, with Sergio Castellitto in the main role and in 1966 as L'ombra cinese, with Gino Cervi in the lead role;^[4][5] in French in 2004 as L'ombre chinoise, with Bruno Cremer in the main role and in 1969 as L'Ombre chinoise with Jean Richard in the lead role;^[6][7] in English in 1961 as Shadow Play, with Rupert Davies in the main role.^[8][9]

Reception

Anthony Boucher of The New York Times summarized the novel in 1964: "Maigret works against a background of respectable middle-class apartments, a cheap music hall and a sordid hotel in the Place Pigalle, all vividly realized, to solve a safe-robbery-plus-murder that reveals an unusually well-characterized killer".^[10]

Bibliography

• Maurice Piron; Michel Lemoine (1983). L'Univers de Simenon, guide des romans et nouvelles (1931-1972) de Georges Simenon. Presses de la Cité. pp. 278–279. ISBN 978-2-258-01152-6. (in French)