Sous Les Vents De Neptune (French Edition) (original 2004; edition 2009)

In this remarkable addition to the Commissaire Adamsberg series, has a serial killer followed Adamsberg to Canada on his training mission?

Between 1943 and 2003, nine people have been stabbed to death with a most unusual weapon: a trident. In each case, arrests were made, suspects confessed their crime and were sentenced to life. One slightly worrying detail: all the presumed murderers lost consciousness during the night of the crime and cannot remember whether they actually did it or not. Commissaire Adamsberg is convinced all the murders are the work of one person: the terrifying Judge Fulgence. Years before, Adamsberg's own brother had been the principal suspect in a similar case and avoided prison only thanks to Adamsberg's help. History now repeats itself when Adamsberg, who is temporarily based in Quebec for a training mission, is accused of having savagely murdered his young lover. In order to prove his innocence, Adamsberg must go on the run from the Canadian police and find Judge Fulgence.

Three wounds in a perfectly straight line was the bloody signature that marked victims from every corner of France who had been murdered at regular intervals over the course of thirty years. Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, the chief of police in Paris's 7th arrondissement, is deeply and personally familiar with the case, and though others were always framed and convicted for these crimes, including his own brother, the Commissaire knows the true identity of the killer — and knows that the murderer died in 1987. All the more disturbing then, is Adamsberg's discovery one morning of a fresh murder with exactly the same profile. Stunned into action — and himself a suspect — Adamsberg must confront the mysterious return of an old, familiar evil.