Description
Book Synopsis
Three times a day in a Parisian square, a curious modern-day crier announces the news items that are left in his box. Over the course of a few days he receives a number of disturbing and portentous messages of malicious intent, all of them referring to the Black Death. Strange marks have also appeared on the doors of several buildings: symbols once used to ward off the plague. Detective Commissaire Adamsberg begins to sense a connection, even a grotesque menace. Then charged and flea-bitten corpses are found. The press seizes on their plague-like symptoms, and the panic sets in.
Trade Review
One of the most fetchingly weird detectives...Adamsberg is a bit like Morse, but much more French. An unusual, eccentric thriller * Daily Telegraph *
Fred Vargas has everything: complex and surprising plots, good pace, various and eccentric characters, a sense of place and history, individualized dialogue, wit and style * Times Literary Supplement *
Moody, tense and grotesque, Vargas's prize-winning novel is a fascinating exploration of Paris's dark side * Guardian *
No procedural, this, as we follow the twists and turns of Adamsberg's intuition - but it is thoroughly high-class entertainment, notably as Vargas is not afraid to test herself with the narrative * Time Out *
On the basis of this elegantly twisted crime novel, Vargas is clearly an author who will rank alongside Henning Mankell. The detective, Commissaire Adamsberg, is the antithesis of Sherlock Homes: intuitive, preternaturally alert to hunches, and shabbier than Colombo. The plot kinks and switches in an utterly compelling manner. Creepy, sophisticated and wonderfully off-beat * Scotland on Sunday *
