Simenon's own travels informed the Maigret books and he allowed Maigret to follow trails across Northern Europe to Holland (where his first introduction to the locals saw him delivering a calf!) and around France where he works with (and sometimes against) the local police. Maigret even solved a case in New York, involving an émigré Frenchman (Maigret in New York).

Even in a strange town, without  his loyal colleagues around him and familiar Paris landmarks, Maigret quickly establishes himself by finding a bar where he can drink the local brew, soak up the atmosphere and observe the regulars. In Maigret in Holland, he enters a sailor's café: "The schnapps was drawn from a procelain tap with brass fittings. It was that which gave the place its pervading odour, as in every other café in Holland, and made it so different from any café in France." 

In Maigret in New York Maigret only really feels at home in the frantic American city once he has left his deluxe Fifth Avenue hotel and found a shabby hostelry near Times Square with a series of small, dark cafés and bars around it. "He liked this noisy, rather vulgar corner of Broadway that reminded him both of Montmartre and the Grands Boulevards of Paris."

Wherever an investigation takes place, Maigret's universal understanding of human nature means that he quickly grasps local politics, pretensions and class issues: "There were, indeed, two worlds here. On the one hand, the salt-water world. Men in sabots, boats, sails, the smell of tar... and schnapps. On the other, the world of respectability. Houses that seemed hermetically sealed..." (Maigret in Holland)

In each of the Maigret novels, Simenon captures a distinctive sense of place and Maigret's investigation is often influenced by the local atmosphere and weather. The Yellow Dog begins with a stormy evening and the overcast skies relect the sense of fear and oppression that have descended on the mediterranean port: "It was raining. The streets were running with black mud. The wind was rattling the blinds."  Later on, a change in the weather lifts Maigret's mood and sets his investigation on it's home run: "The sky looked freshly laundered. It was blue, a rather pale but vibrant blue, glistening with light clouds. It made the horizon bigger, as if the celestial bowl were hollowed out. The sea sparkled, utterly flat and studded with tiny sails that looked like flags pinned to a military map."

Maigret is never really relaxed outside his beloved Paris and away from Madame Maigret's home cooking. "Maigret felt heavy, depressed by the bad crossing and a feeling that he had made a mistake ever to leave his house in Meung-sur-Loire. He was so keenly aware that he did not belong here!" (Maigret in New York). Wherever Maigret is forced to travel to, he remains, however, a force to be reckoned with. Unafraid to ruffle local feathers, he always gets his man in the end.