A #1 bestselling author in France, Fred Vargas repeatedly captivates her many admirers across the globe with suspenseful mysteries featuring Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, "a Gallic cousin to Ruth Rendell's Chief Inspector Wexford" (The Washington Post). In the same way that Donna Leon's Commissario Brunetti and Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano have won countless fans on this side of the Atlantic due to Penguin's robust commitment to the best international mystery writing, Vargas's Commissaire Adamsberg is poised to conquer America in a series of novels that are "truly original . . . like nothing else in contemporary fiction" (The Sunday Times , London), beginning with Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand.
From Booklist
It gets personal in the third Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg mystery to reach the U.S. Previously, the eccentric commissaire of the French national police has maintained a disconcerting detachment, solving cases "like a lone ranger or a Zen archer who went straight to the target." This time, though, Adamsberg faces his personal demon, a serial killer called the Trident who, 30 years previously, framed the commissaire's brother for a murder, successfully avoiding prosecution for that and numerous other slayings. Supposedly dead for more than 15 years, the Trident has risen from the graveβor so Adamsberg believes after encountering a new victim whose corpse bears the tell-tale signs of the Trident's work. Convincing anyone of this fact is impossible, of course, andβdistracted by a trip to Ottawa to attend a forensics courseβAdamsberg returns to Paris to find himself well and truly framed for the murder of a young woman. Vargas continues to mix styles effectively, combining the light, comic touch of the best Simenon with much darker themes. This time, too, with the hero forced to look deep into himself, the novel adds an extra pinch of Rendellian psychology to the stewpot. Ott, Bill
Review
Commissaire Adamsberg must be the most engaging French detective since Maigret. (Scotland on Sunday)
Fred Vargas is the hottest property in crime fiction. . . . Poetic, offbeat and genuinely addictive. [Her] prose has an unusual deftness, a wry humour. A unique voice. (The Guardian , London)
An intriguing, idiosyncratic voice. (Time Out London)
A Vargas novel is as good as a trip to Paris. The style has the same hyper-real quality as all her writing-the real world, but filtered through a strange prism-but it's the plotting that really hits the spot: ingenious and eccentric. (Daily Express , London)
Fred Vargas has everything: complex and surprising plots, good pace, various and eccentric characters, a sense of place and history, individual settings, wit, and style. (The Times Literary Supplement)