Rating: 4/5
Review:
Interesting
This is a slightly odd book. I liked it but I have my reservations.
Fred Vargas
introduces us to Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, a successful
provincial policeman who is transferred to Paris and is confronted
with a rather bizarre series of events which culminate in murder. We
are slowly introduced to Vargas’s main characters, especially
Adamsberg himself, who is an introspective, intuitive man to whom
normal logical deductive methods are a bit of a mystery. As a
result, the book is digressive, quirky and actually rather endearing,
and the crime aspects of the novel take second place to character and
to Adamsberg’s unusual way of looking at things.
I quite enjoyed it,
but I found it a little too digressive and “philosophical”. It
was also hard to shake off the ghost of Maigret as a taciturn,
inward-looking Police Inspector roams the streets of Paris and
interviews people in a very individual way. It was good enough to
make it worth trying another in the series, though, so I have rounded
3.5 stars up to 4. Cautiously recommended.
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