This Night’s Foul Work is the fourth novel in the Chief Inspector Adamsberg series, written by the wonderful French author Fred Vargas, translated into English. It is a playful, interesting and somewhat implausible crime books, but the writing is so great 
Two drug dealers have had their throats cut in the Paris flea market. Normally this would be a case for the Drug Squad, but our beloved commisaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg notices some dirt under the victims’ fingernails and becomes involved. So he wants the case.
Adamsberg comes to believe the murders to be the work of a killer with split personalities, who is choosing his or her victims carefully. As other murders begin to surface, Adamsberg must move quickly in order to stop the murderer from killing again.
It also soon emerges the killer may be a wraith-like, elderly female serial killer – an Angel of Death – who Adamsberg caught but who has now made an daring escape from prison. Despised by the rest of the force but revered by his own motley crew, Adamsberg pursues the shadowy killer across Paris and the Normandy countryside. And guiding the pursuit is Adamsberg’s intuition, making him – as usual – draw conclusions he is unable to explain in a rational fashion to others. At one point a senior detective complains: “The book, the cat, the third virgin, the bits of bone, the whole bloody lot. It’s a complete load of bollocks.” But this time, in This Night’s Foul Work, the logical structure Adamsberg thinks he sees is so thin that even some of his own colleagues start to doubt him.
And Adamsberg himself? Commissaire Jean Baptiste Adamsberg has recently returned from enforced leave and now finds himself working with a pathologist whose apple cart he upset two decades ago. He has moved into a new house haunted by the Wicked Silent Sister, Saint Clarisse, a serial killer of gullible women, before the Revolution. And he is being challenged by a new colleague for a sin committed to him decades ago. There is insanity and irrationality enough in This Night’s Foul Work to last for a long time!
The book is in a sense a police procedural. But Vargas’ writing style transcends definitions and disregards reality. And it’s fun, perplexing, relaxed, full of humor, and lots more. What can I say? Apart from noting This Night’s Foul Work is entertaining in the extreme, and, of course, highly recommended!
See all of Fred Vargas’ books
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