I consider that when a writer like Fred Vargas is maintained with absolute brilliance in a detective genre above more black tendencies, it must be because he still likes to cultivate that art of a purely detective novel, where death and crime are considered as an enigma and a plot is developed towards the discovery of the murderer, in a challenge proposed to the reader.
When this hook is good enough, there is no need to resort to more lurid complements or amoral derivations that affect every social class. With this I am not detracting from the crime novel (quite the opposite, since it is one of my favorite genres), but I am emphasizing the virtuous capacity to surprise the Connan doyle o Agatha Christie when it seems that everything is written in that area.
It is true that a mythological or even fantastic touch that surrounds the plot can offer a special charm while pushing the reader towards scenarios where the investigation flirts with esoteric aspects, but therein lies the Fred Vargas skill to reconcile everything with a rational virtuosity a la Sherlock Holmes.
So all my gratitude to the writer behind the pseudonym of Fred Vargas and her efforts to write purer detective stories with reminiscences of ancestral mysteries included in many of her books. Although it is also true that the overwhelming magnetism of the noir genre always ends up soaking some scenes...
Top 3 recommended novels by Fred Vargas
The upside down man
This was the first novel by the French author that passed through my hands. And as I have already said, when you frequently deal with authors of the black genre, it is a certain discharge to find something fresh that evokes the origins of the genre. Thinking of a werewolf as the protagonist's nemesis in these times may sound anachronistic.
But the grace lies in knowing how to recover those old fears for a current literature. And Fred Vargas does. A being the closest thing to a lycanthrope kills a woman in the vicinity of the forest. Lawrence, an exhaustive connoisseur of this species, investigates the case and leads us between the doubts of what could have happened with that woman who could meet a being from another world.
Ice times
Only a small clue raises the doubt that makes us rule out the suicide of the mathematician Alice Gauthier. The trace of a sign at the crime scene could be safely discarded in the face of the peaceful death of the woman who presented the signs of this voluntary search for death.
A clue of such minimal significance can only mean something if a link to something of greater weight is found. Commissioner Adamsberg will do everything on his part before the death officials take away any threat of investigation in this regard. Fortunately, the discovery of a letter links the death to another death in similar circumstances.
It all seems to go back to a trip to Iceland. What could have happened there, what the expedition members were able to discover, undoubtedly points to the reasons for his death. Only that the time that has passed since that adventure to the northernmost Europe seems to have erased traces. The only positive thing is that Adamsberg is clear that the discovery of false leads announces that the trouble taken in the investigation is well founded. You just need to know how to play the cards and delve into old Norse myths and legends.
Beyond, to the right
The investigative method of the retired policeman Kehlweiler is based on patience and observation (beer through). Having all the time in the world beyond the cases piled up on his table gives good old Kehlweiler a great advantage.
He only needs to find the most difficult case, with the impossible puzzle. And sometimes chance offers itself in the form of a remote forgotten bone that a dog takes care of digging up out of curiosity or hunger... Together with the young Marc, Kehlweiler will stir everything until he finds out whose bone it is, obviously human and completely forgotten. , as a pending case to which you only have to find its pending open file.
Other interesting books by Fred Vargas ...
on the slab
Shortly after Commissioner Adamsberg has returned to Paris after closing a case in Brittany, the Rennes police ask him for help to solve a crime that seems to be related to a dark local legend: the ghost of a count nicknamed "the lame", whose wooden leg continues to echo through the corridors of the Combourg castle.
Adamsberg moves with his team to the area, where the body of a neighbor has been found after the sinister walk of the lame man was heard at night through the streets of Louviec. During the course of the investigation, the curator will not fail to perceive, without being able to connect them or give them a concrete form, his usual "mental bubbles", which always precede the inspiration necessary to solve any mystery. Searching for the stillness that allows them to emerge, he begins to visit a famous dolmen located in the vicinity of the town. There, stretched out on the upper slab, between heaven and earth, in a stone construction over 3000 years old, Adamsberg will seek the solution to the enigma...
A magnetic and intelligent plot with which Fred Vargas demonstrates, once again, why she is unanimously considered the best detective novel author on the international scene.
The Seine flows
Adamsberg becomes flesh in each of these stories that almost bring us closer to the character facing nemesis of any order. One of those volumes with small pieces, semblances that better structure the protagonist seen from different moments and facing different dilemmas towards the resolution of the case at hand and in search of that place in the world that we discover on many occasions in the characterizations of Fred Vargas.
In this volume of three novels, published separately and at different times, we will learn about the curious methods and bizarre reasoning of Commissioner Adamsberg when investigating the most varied murders. In “Health and Freedom”, a flamboyant tramp settles in a bank, with all his belongings, outside the Adamsberg police station while he receives mysterious anonymous threats and a woman is found dead on the railway tracks.
In "The Night of the Brutes", Danglard and the commissioner investigate the strange death of a woman who appears drowned under a bridge over the Seine. In "Five Francs Unity", a bizarre peddler of sponges witnesses the assassination attempt on a rich lady, and the commissioner will get him to collaborate with the police in a really ingenious way.
Humanity in danger
Beyond fiction, Fred Vargas displays ecological awareness or simply common sense to put in black and white the necessary evidence that we are devolving to the extent that our future points to self-destruction as the most palpable evidence of strange complacency.
Ten years ago, Fred Vargas published a short text on ecology, without imagining that it would have an unprecedented diffusion. When he learned that the text was going to be read at the opening of COP24, he decided to expand it. The result is this rigorous, accessible and necessary test. We are all aware that the Earth is in danger, that global warming is a fact and that climate change is a real threat, but we are not acting to correct this situation.
This is the starting point that led Fred Vargas to write Humanity in Danger, an essay that we could well consider a manifesto in which, leaving political and ideological positions aside, criticizes disinformation, proposes concrete actions to correct the excesses of certain practices and urges us to be restrained to reduce their devastating effects.
Using rigorous figures and data from reliable sources that she has been researching for years, the author reviews the alarming current situation: the dizzying and progressive depletion of environmental resources, the danger of CO2 and other gases, the agri-food sector as first cause of pollution or the lack of use of renewable energies.
Fred Vargas, with his usual wit, calls for us all to start the Third Revolution. Only in this way will we be able to save the life of the planet and ensure the survival of our species. LET'S CHANGE COURSE NOW!
