| The Shadow in the Courtyard | |
| Title Orig: | French: L'Ombre chinoise |
| Author: | Georges Simenon |
| Country: | Belgium |
| Language: | French |
| Series: | Inspector Jules Maigret |
| Genre: | Detective fiction, Crime fiction |
| Publisher: | Fayard |
| Release Date: | 1932 |
| English Release Date: | 1934 |
| Media Type: | |
| Preceded By: | Guinguette by the Seine |
| Followed By: | Maigret Goes Home |
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 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]
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]
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]