It is almost impossible to describe the mystery fiction of Fred Vargas and of her (yes, it is a she) character Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg. I initially reviewed the magnificent SEEKING WHOM HE MAY DEVOUR, and were stunned and intrigued by the scattershot detection, the appeal to the supernatural and the almost otherworldly mental state inhabited by Adamsberg, which he subsequently imparts to his other police companions.
Adamsberg is not a genius detective; he is often confused, prone to follow the most obscure leads just because they are obscure, as unlike a real policeman as one could imagine. He has antecedents in mysterious literature, characters such as Michael Dibdin’s Aurelio Zen and others, but Adamsberg’s lack of focus and disinclination to deal with logic stands out in the field. In THIS NIGHT’S FOUL WORK, he runs across a series of grisly crimes that could be tied to an old murderous nurse that he once put away for good.
The woman, now nigh onto 75 years old, was a dissociated killer — a split personality, someone who is two different people entirely, each of which has no knowledge of the other individual living within the same skin. Adamsberg is concerned, to say the least, when he finds that this person has escaped her prison, and that a new series of killings have begun. It gets much, much worse when he discovers that a couple of stags have been slaughtered, with only their hearts removed.
Vargas seems to be a masterful writer, but one wonders how much we English readers lose in translation. With DEVOUR, I raved about her clipped, modernistic narrative approach in a translation by David Bellos. This book, translated by Siân Reynolds, has none of that, but still displays an inventive love of words, exemplified this time by Lt. Veyrenc de Bilhc, who speaks the truth in poetic, 12-syllable alexandrines.
That strange fantastic touch is a hallmark of Vargas’ prose, seemingly no matter the translator. Her plots shift laterally along the edge between reality and the otherworldly, similar to the brilliant Cherie Priest, but with a more blunt, less Gothic edge. Vargas is perhaps the perfect writer for those who like an element of fantasy within their mystery. In her protagonist Adamsberg, she has created a deep and fascinating character — one who is himself a dissociated individual, one who can escape reality while at the same time confronting its horrors. It is not something you will have read before, and you will most likely enjoy it if you don’t mind a touch of uncertainty. That puts it in my “strongly recommended” category. —Mark Rose
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• SEEKING WHOM HE MAY DEVOUR by Fred Vargas
