Mysteries of Paris

Fred Vargas — nom-de-plume of the French archaeologist and historian Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau — took to writing crime novels in 1991. Among the many unusual aspects of her books is the English take on the French titles. L’Homme à l’envers appears as Seeking Whom He May Devour, Pars vite et reviens tard as Have Mercy on Us All while Sous les vents de Neptune becomes Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand. These English versions possess a sort of genius which I find irresistible.

The novels have also been translated out of the order in which they were written. Just issued is Vargas’s first, The Chalk Circle Man, which will be of particular interest to those, like me, who love her work, for introducing her police inspector hero, Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg.

Adamsberg — short, dark-complexioned, rumpled and attractive to women — works by instinct, roaming around Paris, half-seeing, half-feeling the city. He is as free of logic as his second-in-command — erudite, alcoholic Adrien Danglard — is attached to it.