This Night's Foul Work

Wow. I am very impressed with Vargas' ability to use her scientific background to create an amazing and complex plot. She whips local feuds, revenge, dissociation disorder, jealousy, and superstition into a frenzy of a foundation for an excellent mystery.

Her story lines usually are mostly cerebral with little action. But In This Night's Foul Work she uses both:science, much thinking by Adamsberg, Danglard, Retancourt and others, and tons of physical action by virtually everyone. Vargas has also more fully developed the personalities of Adamsberg's team, revealing their unique strengths and weaknesses.

I particularly noted the line on p.99:"When women went off the rails, Adamsberg said; the world seemed to teter on its axis."
Speaks to show more how men view women as virtually invisible, and while taking them for granted, also hold them to a 'higher' moral standard, placing them on the proverbial pedestal. This may be why Adamsberg and others felt sick arresting a woman serial killer prior to their current case.

An excellent, smart and gripping read. show less

Fifth in the Adamsberg series, and another where one of the Three Evangelists has a walk-on part as an expert. The Commissaire has more or less recovered from his nasty experiences in Quebec and is starting to get used to the idea of being a father, but another unpleasant story from his distant past seems to have come back to bite him. And he's confronted not only with a new subordinate who insists on speaking in alexandrines, but also with a baffling set of incidents that are obviously all linked, since this is a crime novel after all, but for the first three hundred pages or so they stubbornly resist falling into place. Once again, it turns out to be a mystery that can only be solved by refusing to follow strictly logical lines. show more

Together with Sous les vents de Neptune, this is one of the best I've read so far in the series: Vargas gives herself the time and space to explore her large cast of characters in some depth, and there's a good balance between mystery, suspense and comedy. It is one that you shouldn't read out of sequence if you can avoid it, because there is information in the next book that removes at least some of the doubts you're supposed to have whilst reading this one.

(I was puzzled by the English title, which looks as though it should be another line from Macbeth but isn't: according to Wikipedia it's taken from the translation of one of the many lines of verse in the text. The French title relies on a pun that doesn't work in English, so in this case it's pretty obvious why the English publishers had to come up with something else.) show less

Adamsberg's new house is supposed to be haunted by the ghost of a murderous 18th century nun. A real life murderer, a nurse Adamsberg put behind bars, has escaped from prison. Two minor thugs for hire in Paris have been murdered. Somebody is shooting stags in Normandy and taking their hearts. Is there a link between these disparate events?

Good enough to do away with regrets that we were not going to hear more about what the murderous nun got up to when she was alive. I wasn't totally convinced by the cat tracking down its beloved human, though.

In this installment of Fred Vargas' crime series featuring Commissaire Adamsberg, there is a new member of the Serious Crime Squad: a man who often speaks in twelve-syllable alexandrine verse. Adamsberg's unorthodox hunt for a dissociative serial killer produces rifts between the squad's positivists and the cloud-shovellers who maintain faith in his willingness to incorporate seeming coincidences into the investigation. Backed by a variety of characters serving as Greek chorus, this novel finds Adamsberg hauling around a pair of 10-point antlers, confronting childhood vulnerabilities, and following around a cat tagged with a tracking device. He also finds time to read to his infant son, as in the following passage:

Adamsberg put the book show more down, meeting his son's gaze.

"I don't know what the hell the 'opus spicutum' is, son, and I don't care. So we can agree about that. But I'm going to teach you how we resolve a problem like this when it crops up in our lives. How to proceed when you don't understand something. Just watch."

Adamsberg took out his mobile and slowly tapped out a number under the child's unconcerned eyes.

"What you do is you call Danglard," he explained. "It's quite simple. Just remember that, always keep his phone number about you."

I rate this novel at 8 out of 10 stars. show less

Vargas writes with precision and directness about vague thoughts and actions, intuitions, and twisted, strangled conversations. She creates characters who push the boundaries of normality and jams them all into one car or police station or pub. She revives ancient mysteries and uses them to motivate murders (with much throat slashing). She does not plod or plot herself through a novel, she breaks all standard police procedure, and she bounces from one revelation to the final one, often without logic or any planning on the part of her head detective. Her mysteries are different and both enjoyable and infuriating. I suspect that is why she has done so well. I shall continue reading her.

In Foul Work she focuses on the apparently show more dysfunctional crime squad run by head detective Adamsberg. And the dysfunctional cat that lives on the copier. But dysfunction solves the offbeat crimes missed by the rest of France's police forces. show less

I love Fred Vargas. Her books are amazing, intricate, twisty matrixes (the last making them difficult to talk about), filled with strange but endearing characters and beautifully unexpected imagery. Commissaire Jean-Baptisite Adamsberg has already displaced Lord Peter Whimsy in my affections, and he is on his way to dislodging Mr. Holmes from his long-held position as my favorite detective. Yes, they're that good.

Being more than a little bit fond of the Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg series I was very annoyed with myself when I got a bit behind with the releases and had to make an effort to catch up. Poor me. So tragic. Having to spend some time with one of my favourite, eccentric detectives and the rest of his team of mildly odd compatriots.

THIS NIGHT'S FOUL WORK sees Adamsberg team pretty well settled, so the introduction of any new lieutenant could be complicated. Louis Veyrenc is even more disruptive, with his tendency to speak in verse (twelve-syllable alexandrines to be accurate), to say nothing of his oddly striped hair and his deeply held, childhood grudge against Adamsberg. Which grudge Adamsberg is pretty well oblivious to until slapped over show more the head with the evidence. He's somewhat preoccupied by the return into his life of old nemesis Ariane Legarde, pathologist, and Adamsberg enemy since he questioned her conclusions in a case twenty-three years earlier. But there are crimes at the centre of this book and typically baffling at that. You can only guess at what the connection could be between the ritual killing of stags in the hills of Normandy, two local "lads" found murdered after raiding the graves of recently deceased spinsters, and the escape from prison of a seventy-five-year old multiple killer nurse that Adamsberg has dealt with before.

Needless to say THIS NIGHT'S FOUL WORK has a wonderful feeling of the Gothic about it. Odd glimpses of shadowy figures creeping around graveyards; curses past and present; places with strange histories; things going bump in the night in Adamsberg's new house; childhood grudges; deeply held beliefs; long enmities and friction. Lots and lots of friction. All of action swirls around Adamsberg as he sort of floats through life. He's more a cerebral than rush around detective, prone to leaps of faith and acute observations - his odd behaviour is no longer regarded as anything out of the ordinary by a team which kind of specialises in odd behaviour. But this team is also capable of immense kindness, understanding and support for each other - they are the perfect group to spend time with if you like things just that little bit batty.

If you're not aware of this series - Fred Vargas is the pen name of Frédérique Audouin-Rouzeau, French medievalist and archaeologist. Vargas, as of THIS NIGHT'S FOUL WORK a twice winner of the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger award, is translated by Siân Reynolds who does a sterling job at translating the language but keeping the overall feel and quirkiness of the books.

Just a quick word of warning - I rather like a series where it doesn't matter if you get them all out of order. In the main I've read the Adamsberg books all over the place but in this case, with the next book AN UNCERTAIN PLACE out already, you'd really be best to read THIS NIGHT'S FOUL WORK first. Without this, earlier, book I suspect a reader could get bamboozled otherwise as there's a lot of setup for AN UNCERTAIN PLACE in THIS NIGHT'S FOUL WORK.

Needless to say I just love these books. But really - don't read them if you're looking for precise behaviour, keen logic, rules and regulations being followed, and no idiosyncrasies. Do read them if you're looking for humour, darkness, quirky, a hugely entertaining police procedurals... well police scenarios. Let's go with that... show less