The Content Reader

Time for a French author for Paris in July. Fred Vargas is a favourite and I found an e-book copy from my library. This is book number 10 in the Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg series. Adamsberg is not the ordinary detective and so are not his colleagues. I think that is one reason why I enjoy Vargas' books. The whole police precinct consists of individual characters with, sometimes, strange habits. The other reason I enjoy her books is that the murder stories often go back in time and often have historical links. As is the case in this book. Here we go back to Maximilian Robespierre and the French Revolution. "A woman is found murdered in her bathtub, and the murder has been made to look like a suicide. But a strange symbol found at the crime scene leads the local police to call Commissaire Adamsberg and his team. When the symbol is found near the body of a second disguised suicide, a pattern begins to emerge: both victims were part of a disastrous expedition to Iceland o...

Paris in July 2020 is hosted by Tamara at Thyme for Tea.  Going into week 4 we enjoy sharing our love for everything Parisian and French. My contribution this week is about one of my favourite French police thriller writers. Fred Vargas is the pseudonym of Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau. She is a historian, archaeologist and novelist. As the two first professions, she is best known for a book about the Black Death. Her main writing these days are those of the police thrillers; three books about  The Three Evangelists, and the books about Chief Inspector Adamsberg. This is a book about the latter.  Vargas combines her interests in history and archaeology and her stories, and crimes, are often based on academic themes. Often history, but in this book, she ventures into science. Namely, into the life and deeds of a spider; Loxosceles reclusa. When a number of older people are dying from a bite from this spider, Adamsberg and his team are getting suspicious. Usually, the bite...

The first book I read by Fred Vargas was ’ The Chalk Circle Man ’. A different kind of ”inspector solves murder” kind of book. So happy when someone in the book club suggested another title of hers, Have Mercy On Us All . Fred Vargas is a pseudonym for Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau, a French historian, archaeologist and writer. Fred is the diminutive of Frédérique, but Vargas comes from Ava Gardner’s character of a fictional Spanish sex symbol Maria Vargas in the film The Barefoot Contessa. I think that her profession as a historian and archaeologist, is the base for the fantastic stories she tells. Her novels are not just any murder mystery; there is a complicated, intricate story behind. It is not for every inspector to solve these kind of murders, but inspector Adamsberg is not anyone. I doubt he would ever have a chance to go up the ranks in real life. But here he certainly is allowed to use his unorthodox methods of murder solving. In this book it seems that the plague is back in Pa...

This is a review for 2014 Monthly Motif Challenge , Book beginnings on Friday , as well as a read for my book club. I heard a lot about Fred Vargas from Renate in our book club. This is one of her favourite crime fiction writers and I think I can agree with her after having read this first book about commissaire Adamsberg. It is a refreshing chief inspector, quite different from others that tend to appear in books like this. I am so tired of these middle aged chief inspectors who are divorced, overweight and depressed and spend all time trying to solve the crime. This chief inspector too does, of course, trying to solve the crime, but it is written in a totally different way. You could read it like a fiction novel, it just happens to have a murder or two in it. Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg has just been appointed chief inspector in the 5th arrondissement in Paris.  He originates from a small town in the Pyrenees and knows very well how nature works. He has made a r...