Fred Vargas

J'aime Fred Vargas--elle est completement superbe! Her books are well written, engrossing, at points hilarious, and just generally "unputdownable," to borrow a phrase from a publisher's blurb. Her latest book, This Night's Foul Work, is no exception to the general rule. It is the fourth book in the Commissaire Adamsberg series, and the most recent to be translated into English. Vargas is at her quirky best in this book and Commissaire Adamsberg is at his fantastic, vague, whirling-minded tricks again. I think he really might be my favorite literary detective ever. Although the book is indisputably a police procedural, Adamsberg is in no way a typical detective. His mind wanders in ways wondrous to behold, and yet somehow his rambling thoughts always manage to slip through criminals' protections and unravel the case from within.

In This Night's Foul Work Adamsberg's usual team is back--the stressed out, increasingly alchoholic Danglard, the imperturbable Violette Retancourt, the constantly eating Froissy, and the other 24 officers who report to Adamsberg--plus a new character, Veyrenc, who, like Adamsberg, comes from the Pyrenees. Veyrenc speaks in twelve syllabic verse, which lends even more poetry than usual to Vargas's writing. Veyrenc also complicates Adamsberg's personal life, which is already just about as convoluted as Adamsberg's mind.

The book begins with the bodies of two young men. Adamsberg is convinced that he should keep the bodies, but the drugs division wants them, because they think that it was drug related. A new pathologist, Ariane, confirms Adamsberg's murder suspicion and informs him that the murders were committed by a woman. Adamsberg knows that the "angel of death" (a nurse who has killed thirty-odd patients) has escaped from jail, so he sets out to stop the angel of death before she can kill more people. As the bodies begin to pile up Adamsberg becomes increasingly anxious to find the "third virgin" before the angel of death finds her first.

The case is complicated by Adamsberg's attempts to bond with his nine month old son Thom, and to re-ignite the flame between Thom's mother Camille and himself. Adamsberg is also struggling to maintain his grasp on the case in spite of his fellow Parisian officers and the Normandy officers who want him to let it drop, the taciturnity of the people of Normandy, Adamsberg's attempts to placate some Norman men by investigating the 'murders' of two stags, the appearance of a centuries old recipe for eternal life, and the irritation of some of Adamsberg's own team members, who think that he is on a wild goose chase. This is an excellent mystery with fantastic characters, an improbable yet oddly believable plot, and the lyrical language that is so quintessentially Vargas. Je vous dis que vous devrez acheter ce livre sans hésitation, c'est magnifique!