The mysterious sign of three

This is the fourth of Fred Vargas’s crime thrillers to be published in English — the third, The Three Evangelists, won last year’s inaugural Duncan Lawrie Dagger for translated crime fiction. Vargas is the pseudonym of a French archaeologist and historian. Don’t let the ‘Fred’ mislead you about her gender.

Wash This Blood Clean From My Hands features Vargas’s series hero Commissaire Adamsberg, a Parisian detective who puts intuition above logic and evidence, and who blunders through his investigations with a blend of obstinacy and integrity. The novel opens with him in the grip of mysterious terrors. Eventually Adamsberg attributes his mental state to the news that a woman’s body has been discovered near Strasbourg. The victim has three neatly aligned stab wounds in her chest. A man has been charged with her murder. But Adamsberg is convinced that the killing is the work of the Trident, a psychopath who has murdered at least nine people since 1943, always with the same three-pronged weapon, and always framing another person for the crime.