Strong character development, captures the mood and landscape wonderfully, good plot without alot of sentimentality. ( )

I loved the two Fred Vargas books translated by Sian Reynolds (The Three Evangelists & Wash This Blood) which I read before this. I wanted to love this one as much but was regularly distracted by the clunking translation by David Bellos.

The prose was often too flat and clumsy to carry the skill this writer has shown in other books and the so-called idioms either dated or simply opaque. The translator clearly couldn’t make up his mind if he was going for an English tone (‘old chap’) or an earthy American detective (‘you'll be in the slammer for the rest of your twatty lives’). Whichever, it doesn’t work. The Head Deputy at the Gendarmerie peppers his sentences with the words "how should I say?" ("So we've come across a ... how should I say ... a lycanthrope", "It's that poor woman who was killed ... how should I say? ... on Sunday") and repeatedly calls Adamsberg ‘old chap’. And the difficulties characters had in remembering the name of the shepherd’s dog – Woof – were equally irritating. While we’re told that the name is intended to mean the yarn drawn over the warp in weaving, in English it is a very, very obvious name for a dog. If I’d read these affectations one more time, I might have thrown this out the window.

It's a passable story, with good characterisation and an interesting depiction of rural life France. But there was simply not enough of Adamsberg’s unique approach to crime solving to keep my attention.

I'm glad I didn't read this one first because, despite its intriguing mystery and Jaques Tati-like cast of characters, I might have attributed the flawed prose to Fred herself and have been put off her other works. Overall then, a light read but one that one suspects would have had far more impact in its original language ... or a better translation. ( )

Vargas has got to be the most distinctive contemporary crime writer in France. Her rules are simple: place and character are everything. Inspector Adamsberg is a holy fool, a resolutely irrational detective whose intuitions triumph where cold logic fails. Backed up by a host of secondary characters whose talents and foibles make of them an unruly but wholly sympathetic family, he muses his way through the convoluted crimes Vargas throws in his path. ( )

Premier roman de Fred Vargas que je lis. L'intrigue est très bien ficelée : on se laisse mener par le bout du nez. Et puis les personnages sont extrêmement bien travaillés dans leur caractère. Je n'ai qu'une envie : reprendre la série des Adamsberg depuis le début. ( )

Boeiende, originele en intelligente wodunit, die vanaf de eerste bladzijde origineel is én blijft tot het einde. ( )