The Chalk Circle Man

This is the first of the Commissaire Adamsberg novels (and the second that I have read): Adamsberg has recently been transferred from the provinces to a police station in Paris, and he's still getting to know his new colleagues. A key element of this first book is the establishing of Adamsberg's relationship with his rationalist subordinate Danglard.

Adamsberg employs a more-Maigretish-than-Maigret approach to detection where he lets everyone else run around and find evidence whilst he immerses himself in the surroundings of the crime for 200 pages, then comes up with a brilliant solution based on a mixture of psychological insight and intuition. In Simenon this is just a convention we have to accept, but here it's made explicit and show more discussed at length, and Adamsberg has to defend his approach against Danglard's strong conviction that intuition leads to miscarriages of justice. Although her great predecessor is never mentioned, Vargas clearly has a bone to pick with Simenon: there are many ironic little reversals of iconic images from the Maigret books concealed in the text (most conspicuously in this book the pipe-smoking suspect and the way the book closes by running the opening scene of the first Maigret novel Pietr-le-Letton in reverse). And of course it is an entirely Maigret-like way of proceeding to take as the starting point for a major investigation a sequence of apparently harmless incidents where no crime has been reported yet.

Vargas is obviously also someone who enjoys playing around with gender reversals to make her characters less predictable: Adamsberg himself is a male detective with some very "feminine" personality traits (passive, silent, calming, beautiful...), and both the books I've read have had important minor characters who are women with strongly "masculine" personalities.

What makes these books interesting is really the combination of a quirky crime story with a serious, reflective style of writing that draws you into sympathy with the characters, odd and fragmented though they are. I'm obviously going to have to keep on reading... show less

I hadn't heard of Fred Vargas or her Commissaire Adamsberg novels until I read that this one had won the International Dagger, and that indeed Vargas had won it several times before with other Adamsberg novels. Which was pretty perplexing, as this is the first in the series . . .

The Daggers are awarded for the year of English-language appearance, it transpires. The mystery remains, unsolved by me, of why the books' UK and US publishers chose to translate later volumes before getting round to the first. Answers on a postcard, please.

Anyway: the police detective Commissaire Adamsberg has recently arrived in Paris from the sticks to head up the 5th arrondissement. His subordinates are still at the uneasy stage of not knowing quite how show more everything is going to fit together under the new boss -- all except one, his alcoholic single-parent sidekick Danglard. They make an likely pair, since Adamsberg seems to decline to do anything so crass as actual detection while Danglard has, as it were, only narrow windows of opportunity between hangover and renewed insobriety. Clearly, though, they're effective, as they prove in this case. Mysterious blue chalked circles have been turning up during the night on the Paris sidewalks, each circle with a random object placed in its centre -- as if some crazed artist were presenting objets trouvés for the world to admire. The work of a madman but, everyone except Adamsberg assumes, a harmless madman. Then this first chalk-circumscribed body turns up . . .

People have been hailing Vargas as a genius, which is not so much overegging the pudding as turning it into a souffle, but this book is certainly a joy to read and I'll be keeping an eye out for its fellows. It took me a little while to work out what its atmosphere reminded me of: imagine, if you will, the result if James Branch Cabell had written Georges Simenon's novels. Here's an example of the near-surreality popping briefly into view that for the most part seems to lurk somewhere just to the edge of the words themselves:

Danglard would say to himself [about his boss, Adamsberg:]: "If I were to announce to him now that a giant fungus was about to engulf the Earth and squeeze it to the size of a grapefruit, he wouldn't give a damn. And that would be a pretty serious matter -- not room for many people on a grapefruit. As anyone can see."

You'll gather that The Chalk Circle Man in no way accords with the templates anglophone publishers tend to impose on the crime/mystery novel. There's nothing really wrong with those templates, of course, except for the fact that they are templates: finding a mystery that follows such a bubblingly different pattern is like finding a glass of cold, refreshing water where all others are lukewarm. Thank heaven the current fashion for translated European detective fiction is bringing us a far wider range of voices than we could have found just a few years ago. show less

Why do anything or write anything? To attract others? Is that it? To seduce people you've never met, as if the ones you have met aren't enough for you? Because you think you can capture the quintessence of the world in a few pages? What quintessence is there anyway? What emotions are there in the world? What can you say? Even the story of the old shrew-mouse isn't interesting enough to tell to anyone. Writing is an admission of failure.
...

"What is the point of it all?" Mathilde immediately asked herself.

To do you good. To get your feet wet. Yes, that was it. To get your feet wet.

~

Vargas is the best crime (fiction) writer I've ever come across. (I'm sure there are many fine ones out there, but Vargas sits at the top of the heap, for me, show more at this moment.) Thank goodness this is only the second of her books I've read, and that there are many more which await me. I couldn't imagine a reading world without Vargas, after this one.

This was a lovely slow dance to the great reveal -- and when it comes, you feel you must have known it all along, intuitively, like the great Adamsberg himself, although you just "couldn't put your finger on" the thing that you knew.

Many books in this genre resolve the mystery for you in a series of steps but at the end of it all, the truth jumps out at you, like a spook from a closet and you think ... how did that happen? How did we get here from there? It leaves you feeling a little bewildered, but nominally satisfied because you think, "OK, that was clever." But you don't really get much out of the book except a few hours of somewhat-enjoyable distraction from the real world, if the author has done the job right. (If not, you resent the time wasted.)

Others in this genre telegraph the resolution so obviously that there is no point in even reading the book. These books remind me of high school: if you absolutely must know the full plot line, just get a copy of Coles Notes/Cliffs Notes, and you're much better off.

These books leave some jumbled feelings behind: you either feel dumber than you are or more clever than you are, neither of which is a valid experience because you've simply been manipulated by circumstances beyond your control.

In other words, the writing hasn't given you anything, except a few hours of cheap distraction.

I realize that for me, that isn't enough. I always want more. Whether I'm reading the The Collected Dialogues of Plato or chuckling over an Archie comic book, I need a subtext, at the very least, that will inspire me with new perceptions of the world. There has to be some meaning to it all.

The Chalk Circe Man offers a grand reveal, in a slow stream of rations along the way so that one is solving the crime in the same time and cadence as are the detectives within the novel. No surprises jumping at you from closets; nothing withheld to make you feel like a fool for not knowing later; nothing overly obvious to make you feel like a coddled imbecile.

The bonus in all of this is that Vargas offers divergent philosophies on living, without judgment. (We encounter someone who drinks a great deal, for instance, but are never burdened with the author's condemnation; or the man who turns up in somebody else's bed every night, so afraid is he of committing to his own true love, but who is neither admonished nor made to do penance through Vargas's expert handling.) Life is what it is. We can make our own judgments, if we feel the need.

Both the regular characters and the situational ones receive the same treatment: no preference is given, nor shriving done, because she doesn't play favourites.

The other bonus is that we are sometimes lead into Vargas's private thoughts, as in the quotation above. Like the rest of us, she struggles to understand what it's all about. Why do we do what we do? Why do we pursue our passions?

To get our feet wet. In other words, to feel awake and alive, and feel the stream of life swirling around one's ankles: to be part of that stream in whatever context, or condition, we choose -- but to be part of it on our own terms. Don't ask questions all the time. Just jump in and see where it will take you.

Perhaps it really was time to go back to the depths of the ocean. And above all, it was forbidden to ask herself what the point of it all was.

Very rarely have I come across such a satisfying read: a good old-fashioned procedural, as a "front man" for the goddess Sophia, the wisdom of the ages.

There are certainly more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are in the crime streets of Paris, and Vargas pulls back that curtain occasionally to give us a peek. show less

Translated from the French, this first in the Chief Inspector Adamsberg series is original and satisfying. Vargas doesn't follow the Dorothy L. Sayers rules of mystery writing so the solution took me by surprise. But let's face it, even if she had followed those rules, I might not have seen this one coming. Throughout Paris there are blue chalk circles being found, circles with an apparently random series of objects inside them: a wine cork, a doll, a man's belt, a dead cat. Bemusing at first, when the body of a murdered woman is found in one of the circles, the police find the circles to be clues in an increasingly frustrating series of murders. Adamsberg is a thinker but one who uses his gut and trusts his instincts. He is determined show more to find this murderer despite the apparent lack of pattern in the emerging evidence. He is also determined to get over the lost love of his life, a plot element which adds interest to the story. The story is interesting and the characters appealing; the translation is at moments awkward but I settled into it as the novel progressed. I'll certainly be continuing this series. show less

This book found its way into my hand in a used bookstore. Blurb on the back, a review from the Winnipeg Free Press says, "Quirky, bizarre, riveting, irresistible, utterly French...Vargas is perhaps the best mystery writer on the planet."

Well. After that, the moody book jacket design (I picked the wrong cover here--I have the blue one with the man on the shadowy street) and the cheap price, it came home with me. We stopped for takeout on the way, and while waiting, I cracked into it. Before the food was ready, I was thoroughly hooked.

The Winnipeg review is accurate in the quirky and bizarre. The characters and dialog are all that.

This was the kind of book, for me, where usual duties might have to wait. The sink can fill with dishes, show more the laundry can sit...all waiting for me to finish the book. I will say that a LOT of information was withheld until the end; the plot was sinuous; I might have guessed who but not why... and I'm itching to get more Vargas, elated to know that there is more to come. show less

First Line: Mathilde took out her diary and wrote: 'The man sitting next to me has got one hell of a nerve.'

Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg grew up in the foothills of the Pyrenees, became a policeman at the age of twenty-five, and after a series of promotions and the passage of twenty years, he finds himself as Commissaire in Paris. Back home Adamsberg was something of a legend:

"You sit around daydreaming, staring at the wall, or doodling on a bit of paper as if you had all the time and knowledge in the world, and then one day you swan in, cool as a cucumber, and say 'Arrest the priest. He strangled the child to stop him talking.'"

Great things are expected of him in Paris, but when he focuses on a case that makes everyone else laugh, some show more begin to wonder if Adamsberg's reputation is all hype.

Almost everyone in Paris is laughing over The Chalk Circle Man, and they scan the newspapers each day to see what bizarre object has been enclosed in a blue chalk circle. Will it be another beer can? Or how about another trombone? Only Adamsberg doesn't think it's funny, and when the next blue chalk circle is around the body of a woman whose throat has been slashed, people begin to realize that the quirky policeman may not be a hayseed after all.

I loved this book. The translation by Sian Reynolds was excellent, and I felt as though I were walking the streets of Paris with Adamsberg. The plot had enough twists and turns in it that, although I'd deduced some things as I read, I was still surprised at the end and laughed with pleasure.

Excellent translation, strong sense of place, nice twisty plot... all those things are important, but it's the characters who stick with me the most. Adamsberg who lets no one keep him from conducting investigations his way. Mathilde, a woman who follows random people through the streets of Paris, observes them, and often takes them under her wing. And Clémence, a septuagenarian who hasn't given up on love and is an avid follower of the "lonely hearts" ads in the newspapers. These characters are what make The Chalk Circle Man sparkle, and they are what make this book memorable.

Comin' through, folks! Comin' through! I've got to get my hands on the second book in this series! show less

Newly arrived in Paris as commissaire of the 5th arrondissement, Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg is troubled by the mysterious actions of the “chalk circle man.” Once or twice a week in different sections of Paris, someone discovers a chalk circle drawn around an inanimate object, always with the same saying surrounding the circle. Adamsberg senses something cruel behind the action. He is drawn to oceanographer Mathilde Forestier, as odd in her own way as he is, and who seems to have more knowledge of the chalk circle man than anyone else in Paris. Events finally prove Adamsberg’s concern justified, as one day a body is discovered inside a chalk circle.

This is a satisfyingly complex mystery peopled with quirky characters, including the show more neurodiverse Commissaire Adamsberg. The scholars/academics in the book are convincing, perhaps because the author herself is a historian and archaeologist. Adamsberg’s physical description and some of his mannerisms remind me of Peter Falk’s Columbo. I think a lot of Columbo fans would enjoy meeting Adamsberg as much as I did. show less