The Three Evangelists (original 1995; edition 2007)

One morning an ageing ex Opera singer, Sophia Simeonidis, notices a tree planted in her garden and becomes obsessed with how it came to be there. She turns to her neighbours, three obsessive historians (the evangelists of the title) and a disgraced policeman who share a dilapidated house, called The Disgrace by Sophia’s husband, to help her solve the mystery of the tree. When their initial investigations reach a dead end the matter is dropped until Sophia disappears and, once again, the residents of The Disgrace set out to discover what has happened.

This is a book of observations about a group of eccentric but likable characters that borders on the surreal at times. It’s full of odd, seemingly irrelevant but somehow interesting details about the characters and the most insignificant moments or dialogue turn out to be of the utmost importance. It’s the sort of thing Oscar Wilde might have written if he teamed up with Lewis Carroll. The writing is utterly delightful with many phrases and passages that made me smile just because of their structure and cadence which is a credit to Sian Reynolds, the translator, as well as Ms Vargas. The characters, in particular the historians who each have a historical field they specialise in, turn out to be the opposite of the superficial, immature people they might first appear to be and I was enchanted by them all.

The plot definitely plays second fiddle to the meanderings of the three evangelists and their neighbours but, unusually for me, I found I didn’t mind as I was totally captivated by the people and the place. There is definitely a mystery and towards the end it’s quite suspenseful, but it’s not a traditional procedural or noir crime novel. In fact it might not even be a crime novel at all aside from the fact that a crime is assumed to have taken place in it but I’ve given up worrying about labels. Regardless of what kind of book it is I found it charming, unpredictable and quite a treasure. ( )

Originally published in 1995, a year before The Chalk Circle Man. The main characters are Marc Vandoosler, a medievalist, Matthias Delamare, a specialist on pre-historic man, Lucien Devernois, whose subject is The Great War, and ex-commissaire Armand Vandoosler, Marc's uncle and godfather, whose career in the police seems to have had some slightly dodgy elements which are never made clear. The historians live together grudgingly, forced together by lack of money, each occupying a separate floor of a rambling old house, generally referred to as 'the Disgrace' as it is so out of keeping with its neighbourhood, stacked in order of their periods of interest, with the ex-commissaire occupying the attic. In the house next door is former opera singer Sophia Simeonidis and her husband Pierre, a social worker, to whom she is almost invisible. One morning a tree appears in Sophia's garden. Though it worries her, her husband does not regard it as a matter for concern. In desperation Sophie visits the Disgrace and asks its occupants to help her get to the bottom of the mystery, quite literally, by digging around the roots of the tree to see if anything has been buried under it. They find nothing, but shortly afterwards Sophie goes missing. Pierre appears unconcerned, and the occupants of the Disgrace set out to find her, aided by her best friend and her niece. An historian and archaeologist herself, Vargas has great fun with her characters, giving her historians characteristics appropriate to the periods they study, characteristics which give them different skills which they apply in turn to the solution of the crime, each needing the others to move the solution forward. Marc resents his uncle/godfather, who teases them by referring to them as Sts Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and who sits in his attic observing and gently guiding the action. I had read a number of the Inspector Adamsberg stories before discovering The Three Evangelists, and at the end of reading The Three Evangelists thought how good it would be if Vargas developed a series based on Vandoosler, who is such a winning character. I then realized that the Disgrace is where Adamsberg goes for advice in Have Mercy On Us All and Adamsberg calls on Matthias in This Night's Foul Work. Early in his career Adamsberg worked with Armand Vandoosler down south. It would be interesting to know how Vargas moved from Vandoosler to Adamsberg. She is obviously fond of the characters from her first book, as she has not abandoned them, but perhaps the structure of their relationships and situation were too limiting to allow a series to develop. Perhaps even when creating the evangelists she had Adamsberg in mind. This book seems to set the pattern of recurring themes in Vargas' work, the historical and religious references. Towards the end of this book the godfather tosses a five-franc piece into the air and catches it before suggesting that they throw it away as anyway they can't cut it into twelve. Marc protests "There aren't twelve of us, only four." "Ah, that would be too simple" Vandoosler replies. In one of the Adamsberg books reference is made to the fact that the inspector's surname includes that of the bible's first man. Adamsberg's first name is, of course, Jean-Baptiste. I am now on the lookout for the appearance of John and other biblicaly named characters. If a Jesus appears it may signal the end of the series. Let us pray that is a long way off!

Inutile, i libri della Vargas vanno letti in ordine cronologico, non in ordine di pubblicazione italiana... Così come gli evangelisti vanno rigorosamente mantenuti in stratigrafia verticale: al piano terra il magma comune dove tutto può aver luogo, al primo il preistorico e mansueto Mathias, al secondo il medievalista Marc, al terzo in trincea il bellicoso Lucien e nel sottotetto il contemporaneo disilluso Vandoosler. ( )

A retired opera singer, Sophia, looks out of her window one day and finds .... a tree. It wasn't there the day before, and it's not a new sapling, but an actual tree. There's no note attached to the tree, or any other clues as to who could have sneaked into her garden to plant the tree. Sophia disappears and is found burned in an abandoned car a few weeks later. Vandoosler, now no longer with the police force, his nephew and 2 other friends he charmingly names after saints, strike out on their own to try and solve this mystery. They seem to find suspects at every corner they come to, all with reasonable motives to have killed Sophia.

This is not a book to start reading if you know you have to go grocery shopping, start cooking dinner in an hour's time, go to work or study, or pick someone up from the airport because you may think you can put it down and pick it up again after a few hours, but what you'll find is you'll be compelled to ignore life around you and continue turning the pages of this wonderful murder mystery. ( )

A readable and literate crime novel set in Paris. Three out of work historians try to solve the mystery of the disappearence of their neighbour. It has that feel of those amateur sleuthing I read in childhood books, as well as a strange kind of humour which didn't quite work for me. Her prose is closer to literary fiction than popular fiction and the plot rolics along with some genuine insight into life.