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Willful Behaviour by Donna Leon (Brunetti #11) (Oct/Nov 25)
By Susan · 18 posts · 11 views
By Susan · 18 posts · 11 views
last updated 11 hours, 24 min ago
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Willful Behaviour - SPOILER Thread - (Brunetti #11) (Oct/Nov 25)
By Susan · 3 posts · 7 views
By Susan · 3 posts · 7 views
last updated Oct 23, 2025 12:57AM
What Members Thought
Another wonderful atmospheric Maigret novel.
So, I was a tad late in reading this, as it was meant to be July's Maigret, but nevertheless it was a fantastic read. Simenon must have been an amazing observer of human nature as his characters show the good things about humans but also the bad, the evil, the hate and the jealousness.
This story is based in a little village in north eastern Holland near the border with Germany, on the river Ems and the gateway to the North Sea. Maigret, unable to spea ...more
So, I was a tad late in reading this, as it was meant to be July's Maigret, but nevertheless it was a fantastic read. Simenon must have been an amazing observer of human nature as his characters show the good things about humans but also the bad, the evil, the hate and the jealousness.
This story is based in a little village in north eastern Holland near the border with Germany, on the river Ems and the gateway to the North Sea. Maigret, unable to spea ...more
An early Maigret, typical of the first ten, all published together in 1932. A good study of small-town bourgeois Dutch life.
The GR blurb:
'Duclos said in an undertone, pointing to the scene all round them, the picture-book town, with everything in its place, like ornaments on the mantlepiece of a careful housewife . . . 'Everyone here earns his living. Everyone's more or less content. And above all, everyone keeps his instincts under control, because that's the rule here, and a necessity if peopl ...more
The GR blurb:
'Duclos said in an undertone, pointing to the scene all round them, the picture-book town, with everything in its place, like ornaments on the mantlepiece of a careful housewife . . . 'Everyone here earns his living. Everyone's more or less content. And above all, everyone keeps his instincts under control, because that's the rule here, and a necessity if peopl ...more
Not one of Maigret's best stories. Set in Holland a man is murdered and a French national is suspected of the murder. Maigret is sent to investigate. The repressed wife and general village with the randy Dutch young girl having an affair with the victim. A nice atmospheric story with unlikeable characters and the murderer an unlikely one!
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Simenon is able to portray characters vividly and succinctly and his plots move briskly. In this book he needs to solve the case without knowing the language.
In this Maigret finds himself sent to a small Dutch town as a French professor has been put under arrest for the murder of one of the inhabitants. Unfortunately, Maigret does not speak a word of the language, so this means he cannot talk to the majority of people involved, only those who know some French. However, this does not seem to hamper him at all, with him just going on in his own way. He decides to re-enact the crime with those involved after gaining his knowledge, to enable him to under
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Maigret is in Holland investigating the murder of an academic, for which the suspect is a French citizen. How and why this happens, or indeed the real attitude of the Dutch police (as opposed to local idiots) isn't clear, but we will pass on that. We then have a portrait of a very neat, ordered, Dutch coastal community. The murder is treated as an inconvenience by most of the locals, and the police would rather it was cleared up quickly by blaming a "foreign sailor" (now gone and never to return
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Apr 14, 2015
Nanosynergy
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Shelves:
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reviewed,
fiction-1930s,
2015read,
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Chief Inspector Maigret is sent to investigate when a French professor visiting the Dutch coastal town of Delfzjil is accused of murder. Both are outsiders. Maigret investigates through the challenges of language barriers and cultural differences. An interesting look a 1930s Netherlands.
Oct 03, 2018
Shabbeer Hassan
marked it as to-read
Jul 21, 2019
Laurel
marked it as to-read
Jan 14, 2020
Nancy Oakes
added it
Mar 31, 2020
Niveditha
marked it as to-read
Jul 28, 2020
Brenda
marked it as to-read
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review of another edition
Shelves:
mystery-thriller,
on-my-shelf
Nov 08, 2022
Gary Vassallo
marked it as ebook-library
