Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand by Fred Vargas

First Line: Leaning his shoulder against the dark basement wall, Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg stood contemplating the enormous central heating boiler which had suddenly stopped working, two days before.

Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg of the French National Police has spent most of his career as a type of Lone Ranger, always maintaining an emotional detachment from colleagues and suspects alike. This detachment can also be seen in one of his favorite ways to spend some down time: sitting in an Irish pub in Paris where he cannot speak a word of the language. There he can enjoy both the feeling of companionship and his solitude.

Adamsberg's newest case will force him to face a personal demon from thirty years in his past-- a serial killer who framed Adamsberg's brother for murder, and who successfully avoided prosecution for that and many other murders. This killer has supposedly been dead for over fifteen years, but when the Commissaire comes across a corpse that bears his tell-tale "signature," he knows the man has returned and is killing again. Trying to convince anyone of this is impossible, and his clandestine investigation is interrupted by a mandatory forensics course in Ottawa, Canada. Once back in Paris, Adamsberg finds himself framed for murder. Will this French Lone Ranger be able to prove his innocence?

I've enjoyed the other three books I've read in this series, but I always felt that Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg was maintaining a distance between us. With Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand, this distance vanished, and I am well and truly hooked. Vargas excels in mixing various styles, and she continues to do so here. There's a light comic touch throughout the book combined with much darker themes. What's new to the mix is the fact that her main character has to look deep inside himself during this case, and this adds just the right amount of psychology to the book.

There is something about a story in which the hero knows himself to be right yet still finds himself fighting against tremendous odds. How is he going to succeed? Where is he going to find trustworthy people to help him? The killer he's been following for so long is highly intelligent and quite adept at covering his tracks. Adamsberg has to change his methods in order to bring him to justice, and changing those methods is not easy.

His help comes from some very unlikely sources: "These last few days, my life has been in the hands of magical women. They've been tossing me from one to another, and every time they save me from falling into the abyss." A large part of the joy in reading this book is becoming acquainted with these magical women, and I refuse to tell you about them because you need to discover them for yourselves.

Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand is one of those wonderful instances in which plot, character, and writing combine in a story that grabs hold and doesn't let go. It's one of my best reads this year and makes me wonder why I've fallen behind in reading Fred Vargas's books.

Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand by Fred Vargas 

Translated from the French by Siân Reynolds

ISBN: 9780143112167

Penguin Books © 2007

Paperback, 400 pages

Police Procedural, #4 Commissaire Adamsberg mystery

Rating: A+

Source: Paperback Swap

Have Mercy on Us All by Fred Vargas

Title: Have Mercy on Us All
Author: Fred Vargas
ISBN: 1843431092
Translated by: David Bellos
Publisher: The Harvill Press, 2003
Paperback, 321 pages
Genre: Police Procedural, #3 Commissaire Adamsberg mystery
Rating: B+
Source: Purchased from Bookcloseouts.

First Line: When manie wormes breede of putrefaction of the earth: toade stooles and rotten herbes abound: The fruites and beastes of the earth are unsavoury: The wine becomes muddie: manie birds and beastes flye from that place....

In a small Parisian neighborhood the age-old tradition of the town crier still goes on. The self-appointed crier, Joss Le Guern, reads out the daily news, bits of gossip, the weather forecast, items for sale... and ominous messages in strange language that are paid for and placed in Le Guern's message box by an anonymous source-- messages that seem to warn of an impending plague.

Concerned, Le Guern brings the messages to the attention of Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg and his right-hand man, Adrien Danglard. When several apartment buildings have their doors painted with the ancient symbol to ward off plague, Adamsberg knows there is a connection. Then a flea-bitten corpse with plague-like symptoms is found, and the Commissaire is under pressure to solve the case and restore calm to a frightened city.

Once again Vargas has worked her magic. She's created a tiny neighborhood in Paris populated with wonderful characters and a true feeling of community. There is more to the plot than first meets the eye as well. At first seen as a straight-forward mystery involving the bubonic plague, Vargas slowly includes snippets of evidence and tiny clues that make the reader wonder if there's not something more to the plot. This is Vargas, so of course there's more to it than the plague!

Vargas is so skilled at plotting that I was convinced that Adamsberg was after the wrong villain. But-- like twisting the barrel of a kaleidoscope-- the facts kept shifting in and out of focus, regrouping themselves into different patterns, and I slowly began to realize what was going on.

As ever, Adamsberg is the master chef of the book. Yes, he has his men gather all the clues, follow the chain of evidence, turn everything over to the pathologists and other fact-finders, but he relies on his thought processes. All the evidence, all the interviews, all the random impressions are like the ingredients in a recipe. It's up to Adamsberg to put everything together and add the spice of his intuition to come up with a memorable dish. If you're in the mood for a savory meal, I heartily recommend a Commissaire Adamsberg book by Fred Vargas! If you're new to these books and are wondering whether you should start at the beginning of the series, it's really not necessary. Have Mercy on Us All stands alone quite well.

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Seeking Whom He May Devour by Fred Vargas

Title: Seeking Whom He may Devour
Author: Fred Vargas
Translated from the French: David Bellos
ISBN: 9780743284028
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2006
Paperback, 304 pages
Genre: Police Procedural, #3 Chief Inspector Adamsberg mystery
Rating: B
Source: Purchased at the Poisoned Pen.

First Line: On Tuesday, four sheep were killed at Ventebrune in the French Alps.

 A small mountain village in the French Alps awakens each morning to the grisly sight of yet more sheep with their throats torn out. A local insists that it's the work of a werewolf, and when she is found killed in the same manner, people begin to wonder if she was right.

Soon an unlikely little group forms of the murdered woman's son, one of her shepherds, and her friend Camille. They've decided that a local eccentric named Massart is the werewolf, and since he's nowhere to be seen, they're going to find his trail and catch him. On their comedy-of-errors road trip, it doesn't take them long to realize that they just don't have what it takes to apprehend a werewolf, and Camille summons Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg to help them. Adamsberg finds that there are many layers of buried secrets for his intuition to unravel.

Adamsberg has been compared to Maigret, and I can't help but chuckle at his choice of venue for deep thinking:

The Waters of Liffey provided a first-rate solution to his dilemma. The only people in the bar were noisy, boozy Irishmen speaking what was for Adamsberg a completely hermetic tongue. He thought he must be one of the last people left on the planet to know not a single word of English. Such old-fashioned ignorance allowed him to fit happily into the Liffey, where he could enjoy the stream of life without being in any way inconvenienced by it. In this precious hidey-hole Adamsberg spent many an hour dreaming away, peacefully waiting for ideas to rise to the surface if his mind.

The stars of Seeking Whom He May Devour are, without doubt, the wonderful cast of characters and the eerie, creepy atmosphere high in the mountains with few people around. Vargas came close a time or two to getting me to believe in werewolves.

As much as I enjoyed the characters and the atmospheric setting, I did find the plot to be a bit of a letdown. When one of the characters was described, I knew that person was the killer immediately. If I hadn't known this so quickly, I think Vargas would have had the hair standing on the back of my neck. I missed that element of suspense in what was otherwise a very good book.

I happened to read this book in the series out of order, skipping from the first book to the third. Vargas provided just enough backstory to keep me grounded without bogging down the plot.

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The Chalk Circle Man by Fred Vargas

Title: The Chalk Circle Man
Author: Fred Vargas
Translated from the French by: Sian Reynolds
ISBN: 9780143115953, Penguin, 2009
Genre: Police Procedural, #1 Commissaire Adamsberg mystery
Rating: A+

First Line: Mathilde took out her diary and wrote: 'The man sitting next to me has got one hell of a nerve.'

Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg grew up in the foothills of the Pyrenees, became a policeman at the age of twenty-five, and after a series of promotions and the passage of twenty years, he finds himself as Commissaire in Paris. Back home Adamsberg was something of a legend:

"You sit around daydreaming, staring at the wall, or doodling on a bit of paper as if you had all the time and knowledge in the world, and then one day you swan in, cool as a cucumber, and say 'Arrest the priest. He strangled the child to stop him talking.'"

Great things are expected of him in Paris, but when he focuses on a case that makes everyone else laugh, some begin to wonder if Adamsberg's reputation is all hype.

Almost everyone in Paris is laughing over The Chalk Circle Man, and they scan the newspapers each day to see what bizarre object has been enclosed in a blue chalk circle. Will it be another beer can? Or how about another trombone? Only Adamsberg doesn't think it's funny, and when the next blue chalk circle is around the body of a woman whose throat has been slashed, people begin to realize that the quirky policeman may not be a hayseed after all.

I loved this book. The translation by Sian Reynolds was excellent, and I felt as though I were walking the streets of Paris with Adamsberg. The plot had enough twists and turns in it that, although I'd deduced some things as I read, I was still surprised at the end and laughed with pleasure.

Excellent translation, strong sense of place, nice twisty plot... all those things are important, but it's the characters who stick with me the most. Adamsberg who lets no one keep him from conducting investigations his way. Mathilde, a woman who follows random people through the streets of Paris, observes them, and often takes them under her wing. And Clémence, a septuagenarian who hasn't given up on love and is an avid follower of the "lonely hearts" ads in the newspapers. These characters are what make The Chalk Circle Man sparkle, and they are what make this book memorable.

Comin' through, folks! Comin' through! I've got to get my hands on the second book in this series!

[Source: Christmas gift from my husband.]