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. The novels will not be to everyone’s taste: full of oddballs and eccentricity, they become ever wilder, loopier and more far-fetched. Those not already acquainted with them should start with the best, Have Mercy on Us All, after which it becomes easier to take the absurdities in one’s stride.

The first chapter of Have Mercy on Us All contains these words:

When manie woormes breede of putrefaction of the earth: toade stooles and rotten herbes abound: the fruites and beastes of the earth are unsavoury: the wine becomes muddie: manie birds and beastes flye from the place.

This early description of the effects of bubonic plague is being read out by Joss, a former sea captain, now self-appointed Parisian Town Crier, who makes a living by declaiming messages left in a jar with money at a pitch between the Rue Delambre and Edgar-Quinet.