From the Bookshelf of Around the World in 80 Books…

For that is how Adamsberg found his ideas - simply by waiting for them to turn up. When one rose before his eyes like a dead fish on the crest of a wave, he picked it up, turned it over, asked himself whether he needed this item at the moment, whether it was of any interest. Adamsberg never thought actively, he found it quite sufficient to daydream and then to sort his catch, like a fisherman scrabbling about clumsily in the bottom of a net and finally picking the prawn out of the mess of sand, seaweed, pebbles, and shells. Adamsberg's thoughts contained plenty of seaweed and sand, and he didn't always know how to avoid getting caught in the mess. He needed to jettison a lot of it, evacuate great heaps. He was aware that his own mind produced a mixed bag of mental items of uneven size and value, and that things did not necessarily happen the same way for other people. He had noticed that the difference between his thinking and the mental products of Danglard, his number two, was identical to the difference between a netful from the riverbed and a fishmonger's neatly laid-out slab. ... That is how Adamsberg used his brain, like an ocean that you trust entirely to feed you well, but that you've long ago given up trying to tame.

"Woof? Is that his name?" she asked.

"I picked it from the dictionary, arbitrarily, when he was born," Soliman explained. "'Woof. n. A. The threads that cross from side to side of the loom. B. A woven fabric. C. The texture of a fabric."

"I see," Camille said.

"It's the mark of the werewolf. The only mark. He's got his hair on the inside because he's an inside-out person. At night he turns himself round and his hairy coat reappears."

"Elsewhere the red line keeps away from towns. So if it goes via Bourg-en-Bresse, there must be a reason for it. Seeking whom he may devour."