This Night's Foul Work [Hardcover]

When Commissaire Adamsberg moves into his new house he is promptly informed by a neighbour that it is haunted by the ghost of the Silent Sister, a homicidal nun slain by a vengeful son. Adamsberg, being Adamsberg, accepts the news with nary a shiver. He has other matters on his mind. Two men have killed on the outskirts of Paris, their throats cut. The drug squad are trying to wrest the cases from him, but Adamsberg is determined to keep hold of them, adamant that the killings are not about drugs, his seeming only reason the mysterious soil found under the fingernails of both victims. And, of course, his intuition. On top of this, Adamsberg has to work with a new female pathologist with whom he had a run-in years previously, and with a new recruit to the squad, the mysterious Veyrenc, who has a tendency to speak in impromptu verse (from which the novel's title springs), and has a dark link with Adamsberg's own past also.

Then, Adamsberg has cause to visit a remote village in nearby Normandy, and hears the news that a stag has been found in local woodland, slain seemingly for no reason, certainly for no hunting trophy, with its heart torn out and left beside the body. It is only when Adamsberg hears about the death of a second stag that he has the flash of inspiration that jolts the puzzling investigation into action.

Of all European crime-writers, Fred Vargas is my favourite. Others may be brilliant, but Vargas is utterly unique, and that is the reason I hold her in such esteem. Nobody translated into English writes crime novels the way she does, with the humour, the quirkiness, the complete disregard for rationality (even though things often do turn out in a mostly rational manner). She is unique, and it is that uniqueness that's won her the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger two year's running. I wouldn't expect her to win it again for the third year, but I confess I would be surprised if This Night's Foul Work doesn't make the shortlist again, holding as it does all the qualities of her previous novels.

This Night's Foul Work is, I believe, the 7th and most recent Adamsberg novel, yet the fourth in English. Hopefully they will get around to translating some of the earlier ones so readers can get the full arc of Adamsberg's fictional life. I would love to know the full picture about his tricky relationship with beloved Camille, for example. However, it is fortunate that one doesn't need to read the series in order to be drawn into such an appealing, eccentric character. Adamsberg is the fulcrum of this series, and he and the way Vargas writes make an almost perfect match: eclectic, eccentric, a little flippant, sometimes seeming to make no sense whatsoever, wilfully encouraging the impossible as a result of intuition. They both appeal to the part of the brain that wants to embrace the seemingly inexplicable, the things which rationally cannot be, and yet *are*. If there's one thing that sums it all up it's the sheer twisted imagination of it: the everyday supplanted into a bizarre situation (the tree in The Three Evangelists, for example). The usual transposed on the unexplainable, normal events made bizarre by little imaginative details.

The novels are so absolutely refreshing. They are light yet entirely serious, full of alcoholic office cats and at the same time as full of instinctive understanding of how human beings work, both in groups and alone (Adamsberg's trip to a village in Normandy, and his encounters with the locals who gradually accept and even embrace him, are among the best scenes in the entire book). There is no other writer like her, and nor, I think, another writer who could pull of the books in the way she does. The writing is witty and full of humour and so very sprightly. The pages fly by in a sheer feast of intelligent entertainment. The protagonist is brilliant, as is his supporting cast. All I can do is to exhort people to read her without further ado. A Fred Vargas experience is one quite unlike any other.

Like most of the Commissaire Adamsberg mysteries, Fred Vargas has here turned Paris and Normandy into places of mystery populated by highly original and eccentric beings-both good and evil. I read this book in three sittings (and lost some sleep for it) because I couldn't put the book down. Vargas not only creates a suspenseful mystery but like the best genre writers tells the story of a culture, even going back to her specialty, medieval archeology, for inspiration. Adamsberg is surrounded here by his usual, very odd group of investigators. Even the obvious dei-ex-machine that she uses from time to time to move the plot forward don't irritate because the characters and the energy of the plot keep you always going forward. Only one critique; there a number of typos in the book that become irritating after a point. I hope the publisher fixes this in the next printing.

For an eloquent rundown of the basic plot of this literally marvellous novel, I gladly direct you to Rachel Walker`s lead review on this page. I endorse all she says about this treasurable author and her creation.
Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg is one of the most original and likeable detectives since Sherlock Holmes himself. Vargas hasn`t done the gimmicky, and now all too predictable, thing of giving her hero a distinctive hobby or character flaw - opera or jazz, for example, or a drink problem - but has taken the more subversive step of actually giving him a character. And what a character! Adamsberg is fascinatingly complex, with a dreamy, poetic turn of mind, more than open to the apparently inexplicable - indeed, seeming to embrace it - and complemented in this book by a real poet, his possible nemesis, the verse-spinning fellow officer Veyrenc (names are evocative in Vargas, of character and of region). But Adamsberg also can be ruthlessly tough or pragmatic when called for. He is a bit of a loner, with an instinctive, rarely vindictive, zen-like way of dealing with recalcitrant or boorish colleagues, telling one officer, who has the blithe surname Noel, to go down to the Seine and look at the seagulls for however long it takes for him to cool off.
Then there is the fluffy yet vital matter of Snowball, the office cat...
There are so many twists in the plot, especially later on when the chase hots up, that a genuine sense of mystery is conjured up, and the book becomes a real thriller. It has to be said that the whole thing might have been trimmed by a chapter or two round about the halfway mark, where matters get a little bogged down in Normandy, among the admittedly delightful Greek chorus of local barflies, but that`s a small quibble.
What raises this far above most crime fiction today is its feeling for humanity, with a respect for its foibles and eccentricities. It is also, quite often, very funny. It`s a novel with a lot of characters, not least the seemingly inexaustible supply of police officers of every rank and character-trait, but I never felt burdened by too many names, and she (our Fred is Frederique, a French female historian-archaeologist) draws her dramatis personae with such deft brushstrokes that they all but dance off the page.
The more arcane elements of the plot become a touch incredible at times - penile bones, stags` hearts, ancient relics - but they play their part to the bitter end of this highly idiosyncratic, humorous, poignant, and richly readable novel.
As Veyrenc, the poet-policeman, might involuntarily say:

My lords and ladies,
I recommend this book to you
As one who loved it through and through.
I feel quite sure that you will too.