Temps glaciaires - Fred Vargas

Fred Vargas has her own unique approach to the crime thriller, and in her Commissioner Adamsberg series at least (although it's there also to an extent in her Three Evangelists series) - there are two themes that both feature to one extent or another; one related to history and the other to the idea (if not necessarily reality) of something supernatural. Having finally arrived almost a decade after publication at Temp glaciaires, those two themes here seem to me so outlandish that they are almost wilfully self-referential to the extent of self-parody. Or perhaps the author sees it as something of a self-imposed challenge. It's almost as if she has come up with the two most outlandish stories she can imagine and attempts to connect them. One featuring an evil spirit that haunts a small Icelandic island and one where the descendants of French revolutionaries replay in costume the pronouncements, betrayals and executions of their rivals. Only Vargas could get away with it, and she almost does, but not quite.

As is often the case, Commissioner Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg seems to just attract cases of the stranger variety falling into his lap. Other times, if the circumstances and evidence of a crime is sufficiently bizarre, he seems to be the person others turn to for direction. This time it is a colleague in a neighbouring precinct that contacts the Commissioner. Well, the first contact is with his second-in-command, Danglard, asking him to just to run his eye over a case of suicide that has just come up. The death of Alice Gauthier would almost be routine but for the fact that there is no letter, just an unusual and indecipherable symbol left on the wall beside the bath where she was found.

There is not enough really to pursue this any further - and certainly nothing in the realms of the bizarre as far as Adamsberg is concerned - but he holds off making any snap judgement in the hope or expectation that inspiration might strike, and sure enough the next day a lady arrives at the station and says that she posted a letter for the deceased not long before her reported death. Witnessing her falling in the street, the lady helped her up, picking up a letter she had dropped and posting it on her behalf. The Commissioner can't believe his luck that not only did the lady report this after reading about it in the paper, but she even remembered the address the letter was addressed to. Things start to look a little more unusual when they go to the address only to find that the father of the recipient has committed suicide also, just a day after Alice.

Amédée Masfauré reveals that the letter from Alice was a summons to hear a story she had to tell about a traumatic expedition to a remote Icelandic island 10 years ago, one believed by locals to be haunted by an evil spirit. Caught in the unpredictable climate of the island, several people died, murdered by another anonymous member of the expedition group, one of the victims Masfauré's mother, the wife of his father who has just committed suicide. Was his father consumed by guilt at the cover-up, are these really two suicides or has else someone has gone to some lengths to remove any witnesses from revealing the truth? But is this case really about a bizarre account of an incident on a small Icelandic island or could it have something to do with a secret historical society devoted to the French Revolution?

Well, it certainly sounds like a distinctive Fred Vargas thriller but personally, this is the first Adamsberg or indeed Vargas thriller that I haven't been immediately drawn into. It's actually not typical then for this author, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing, as there was always the danger of Vargas getting bogged down in mannerisms and poetic eccentricities, but this one just doesn't add up. The plot feels forced - an expedition to Iceland where no one else knew the names of the others in the team? A secret society where everyone dresses up as historical figures from the French Revolution, disguising their own identity to the extent that no-one knows anyone else? The investigation is also - perhaps consequently - somewhat haphazard as Adamsberg and his team - who have a greater presence here than anywhere else in the series so far - spend a lot of time trading historical observations and poetic allusions.

"Vous désertez les terres de la raison, commissaire" - ("Commissioner, you are abandoning the domain of reason"), one figure tells him, and after a while even Adamsberg admits that "On a perdu le chemin. Ou plutôt, on ne l’a jamais trouvé" ("We've strayed from the path. Or rather, we've never found it"), and yet he finds his way through this “monumentale pelote d’algues desséchées” (this novel's poetic description of the mess that they have to work through). With its French Revolution aspect, it feels like this should be a case that involves the Three Evangelists, although they have long disappeared from the Adamsberg picture and as a vehicle for Vargas. It's Danglard who is the foil for Adamsberg now, his rationality and knowledge both a help and a hindrance to the Commissioner. And yet it's between them that - frustratingly as far as Danglard is concerned and almost all of his team in opposition to the Commissioner methods this time - Adamsberg finds his way through the monumentale pelote d’algues desséchées and has the satisfaction of telling them so at the conclusion.

Inevitably, Vargas does also manage to find a way through the monumental mass of dried seaweed that she has created in the combining of the two bizarre threads. There are still too many holes in the whole secrecy and no-one knowing anyone else's identity in both strands of Temps glaciaires, making it a frustrating read and hard to take seriously - I'm afraid I would have been with Danglard on this one - but Adamsberg's mic-drop revelations and the resolution to both mysteries does bring the novel to a satisfactory conclusion.

Reading notes. Temps glaciairies by Fred Vargas was originally published in France in 2016 by Viviane Hamy. It's English langage publication title is A Climate of Fear. I read the 2016 J'ai Lu French hardcover edition. I'm not a book fetishist, reading mostly eBooks these days, but this is a beautiful edition. It's a cheap €10 pocket hardcover with no dustjacket, but the pages have stitched binding and it's perfectly sized. The book's edge-papers are black, and I had to lightly peel to separate most of the pages, which gave made it feel fresh and new. I'm a big fan of Fred Vargas, but left this and subsequent book too long, partly because I didn't want to have no new Vargas to read and I also wanted to re-read her earlier books. With a new one finally arrived in 2023 after a six year gap, it's time to catch up, but I hope Quand sort la recluse and Sur la dalle aren't as disappointing as this one.