|
Some notes on "yellow dog," and its use by
other writers:
 | "yellow dog" Democrats:
folks who would "vote for a yellow dog as long as it was a Democrat." |
| A screed against Governor
Gray Davis (California) by Toren Smith ("Gray
Davis, Yellow Dog") |
|
Maigret and the Yellow Dog,
by Georges Simenon
 | Analysis by Darran
O'Donoghue, from amazon.com: Yellow
Dog is model Maigret for a number of reasons. It crystallises the
Maigret detective method, rejecting Holmesian deduction or modish scientific
procedures, the Inspector preferring to silently absorb the atmosphere of a
place, the charactetrs and faces of its people. The progress Maigret makes
with this infinite patience he keeps to himself, exasperating superiors,
colleagues, citizens, even the reader. In these books, crime isn't static, a
thing of the past to be frozen and endlessly analysed, as in Agatha Christie
et al, but a fluid, ongoing part of the social fabric. The book introduces
the young Inspector Leroy, who, throughout the series will become Maigret's
most trusted ally. The narrative plays variations on Simenon's favourite
themes, most especially the different levels of vice and transgression in
French communities, hypocritically categorised by class. His charting the
development of public fear into the violence of mob panic is terrifying and
prescient.
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A
Little Yellow Dog: An Easy Rawlins Mystery, by Walter
Mosley
| The saga of Easy Rawlins that began in 1990 with Devil
in a Blue Dress, continues in A Little Yellow Dog. Working as a
janitor at Sojourner Truth Junior High School, Easy is asked to care for a
small dog owned by the attractive Idabell Holland, a teacher at the school.
When Idabell's husband is murdered, Easy finds himself mixed up with a gang
of criminals engaged in looting Los Angeles schools and smuggling heroin
from France. Idabell and Easy fall into a sexual liaison, but in the wake of
it, Idabell is found stabbed to death in the passenger seat of Easy's car.
While at first Easy thinks the murders are a "simple falling out of
thieves," a surprising twist on the level of "The Maltese Falcon" reveals
the truth.
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Emotionally Weird, by Kate Atkinson
| Populated by a huge cast of crazy
people,
a yellow dog and a succession of hamsters all called McFluffy
|
| From Publisher's Weekly:
When Atkinson's first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, beat
out Salman Rushdie's
The Moor's Last Sigh for the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year Award, a
controversy in the British press ensued. But this imaginative and
unconventional writer strikes back at her detractors in her third book
(after Human Croquet), skewering the academic literary establishment
with understated but spot-on humor, while telling an imaginative tale both
outrageously funny and poignantly human: Tom Robbins meets John Irving. |
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