Have Mercy on Us All - Commissaire Adamsberg (Paperback)
Fred Vargas (author), David Bellos (translator)Published: 07/10/2004
Three times a day in a Parisian square, a curious modern-day crier announces the news items that are left in his box. Over the course of a few days he receives a number of disturbing and portentous messages of malicious intent, all of them referring to the Black Death. Strange marks have also appeared on the doors of several buildings: symbols once used to ward off the plague. Detective Commissaire Adamsberg begins to sense a connection, even a grotesque menace. Then charged and flea-bitten corpses are found. The press seizes on their plague-like symptoms, and the panic sets in.
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9780099453642
Number of pages: 400
Weight: 277 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 24 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
One of the most fetchingly weird detectives...Adamsberg is a bit like Morse, but much more French. An unusual, eccentric thriller - Daily Telegraph
Fred Vargas has everything: complex and surprising plots, good pace, various and eccentric characters, a sense of place and history, individualized dialogue, wit and style - Times Literary Supplement
Moody, tense and grotesque, Vargas's prize-winning novel is a fascinating exploration of Paris's dark side - Guardian
No procedural, this, as we follow the twists and turns of Adamsberg's intuition - but it is thoroughly high-class entertainment, notably as Vargas is not afraid to test herself with the narrative - Time Out
On the basis of this elegantly twisted crime novel, Vargas is clearly an author who will rank alongside Henning Mankell. The detective, Commissaire Adamsberg, is the antithesis of Sherlock Homes: intuitive, preternaturally alert to hunches, and shabbier than Colombo. The plot kinks and switches in an utterly compelling manner. Creepy, sophisticated and wonderfully off-beat - Scotland on Sunday
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“Have Mercy on Us All”
An excellent crime thriller which suffers only from a rather poor English translation, which at times stutters and spoils the flow of the book. If not for the translation I'd have rated this book 5 stars.
“Have Mercy on Us All”
Stumbled on Fred Vargas by accident and absolutely adore her writing style and humour. The quirkiness and imperfections of the characters really help you to believe in them and care what happens to them. I will read... More
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