To The Last Page

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 Temps 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 s...

Fred Vargas is a unique voice in French crime fiction, one of the very best in any language in fact. Although translated in English, she doesn't seem to have made the same impression in the UK or at least hasn't received the attention her works deserve. I don't know whether her 'unique voice' translates well, as I haven't read any of the translations, but it's entirely fitting that her work at least has been translated where other fine French crime writers have been neglected. Even so there are two notable omissions (three if you count her original graphic novel with Baudoin  Les Quatre Fleuves ), one of them the excellent Ceux qui vont mourir te saluent , the other being the short story collection Coule la Seine . Although part of the Adamsberg series, the three brief stories here are admittedly minor pieces, but being Vargas of course they are still a little bit special. Salut et liberté (1997) Vargas can do serious and quirky even in the short story forma...

Once again, with her latest Commissioner Adamsburg novel L'armée furieuse Fred Vargas shows why she is in a league of her own when it comes to French crime writing, or indeed in simply just in a league of her own. If there's a distinctly French character to her work, it's probably in the nature of Adamsberg, or perhaps more in the various types of characters Adamsberg meets in his cases. Not surprisingly, there are more than a few unusual types that come up in L'armée furieuse . How do these people seem to find Adamsberg? Mythology and the supernatural increasingly plays a part in the cases investigated by Adamsberg, some of which turn out to have human agent behind the strange events, others (like the previous Un lieu incertain ) are somewhat more ambiguous. Here, Adamsberg is sought out by Valentine Vendemot, from a small village called Ordebec in Normandy. A man has gone missing, Michel Herbier, but she's not particularly concerned about him, as he's not wel...

As is often the case with Fred Vargas and her Commissioner Adamsberg cases, strange things happen, sometimes an almost supernatural side tapping into dark myths, but always something bizarre, something never encountered before. It's only Adamsberg for example who would have strangeness follow him across the English channel at the start of Un lieu incertain , attending a conference in London on the Flow of Migration, and be greeted with the sight of 17 shoes arranged facing the gates of Highgate Cemetery, each of them still containing the severed feet of their owners. Despite being very obviously an Adamsberg kind of problem, he tries to keep away from this one, finding himself occupied with another extreme case of his own back home. Pierre Vaudel, a retired journalist, 78, independently wealthy, has been found dead in his home. Or not so much found as obliterated, someone taking great care to cut up and hammer the pieces of his body into small fragments that are scattered across hi...