Word: maigret
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...least one clue to the enduring fascination of Sherlock Holmes. He has the mythic quality of a seer. He is a master illusionist of the mind, a cerebral magician. He simply does not belong in the ordinary annals of sleuthdom. Even such outstanding detectives as Nero Wolfe, Inspector Maigret and Philo Vance pile up and sift the facts. Holmes notes the evidence with something like X-ray vision and pulverizes it with weary disdain in a sentence or two. His fictional colleagues may be clever; he is clairvoyant...
Freeling pleaded extenuating circumstances-his own need for a change of character and scene. Faithful Freeling readers who, since Love in Amsterdam (1963), have stoutly prized Van der Valk even above Simenon's Inspector Maigret, ground their teeth and waited...
...commission in moves to reform the market system and protect investors. Instead of wasting resources trying to track down small-time securities sharpies, he has concentrated on nailing the big operators, and he has shown a knack for it that would be worthy of the fictional Inspector Maigret, another unprepossessing sleuth. He was active in or headed the SEC investigations that led to charges being filed against such celebrated operators as Lowell Birrell, Eddie Gilbert. Louis Wolfson, Robert Vesco and Bernard Cornfeld.*When tremendous pressure was brought on the SEC to allow Cornfeld to sell mutual funds...
Such a role requires little more of Edward Fox than looking the part, which he does. But a platoon of expert character actors, led by Michel Lonsdale as a Maigret-like master of the hounds, and including such worthies as Eric Porter, Cyril Cusack and Delphine Seyrig, give a human resonance to the film. Author Forsyth, a dealer in stereotypes, never managed that. Best of all, Zinnemann understands what the oldtime action directors knew instinctively: violence and death do not arrive in pompous slow motion but shock us with their suddenness. Yet Zinnemann's handling of violence is tasteful...
...with Simenon's Inspector Maigret, exposure to Van der Valk is likely to prove infectious. Even when the story seems to unwind in slow motion, Van der Valk's reflective concern for the role of character in crime makes the trip worthwhile. The prizewinning Criminal Conversation (1966), for instance, presents an Amsterdam society doctor, highly intelligent but neurotic and febrile, who is unprovably guilty of murder. In a long series of informal conversations, Van der Valk, in effect, kills the man with kindness and understanding, finally inveigling him into admitting his crime by laying bare the poverty...