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Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand, by Fred VargasEnglish translations of Fred Vargas' books
Fred Vargas was born in Paris. She was educated as a historian, and an archaeologist. Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand is the fourth Fred Vargas novel to be translated into English (this is actually the fifth in the Superintendent Adamsberg series, but the first and fourth in the series haven't yet been translated). This is the latest Commissaire Adamsberg mystery, a wonderful series that has been a huge hit in Europe.  
In Wash this Blood Clean From my Hand, the enigmatic inspector Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg finds himself in crisis. Not for the first time, though! For three decades, he has been on the trail of Judge Fulgence, a serial killer who spears his victims with a trident before framing an innocent bystander. Now, however, Adamsberg becomes the fall guy. This despite the fact that Fulgence has been dead for 16 years! However, this is only one of the oddities in this wonderful oddball police drama with its own strange internal logic and bizarre motifs. And Adamsberg is up against the genius of a methodical killer who's mind in many ways outmatches Adamsberg's! Adamsberg eventually manages to trace the source of the discomfort to a newspaper article describing a murder of a young woman. He recognises the MO of the killer, three stabs in a horizontal line, as that of a serial killer he had been tracking for many years until the killer's death some sixteen years ago. But how can a dead man kill again? Adamsberg had pursued the killer he termed 'The Trident', a man who had lived in his village when he was growing up, across France until the man, the untouchable Judge Fulgence, died. Not surprisingly, the police in charge of the case refuse to take Adamsberg seriously when he again points to Judge Fulgence. After a short fling with a lady in Canada, Noelle, Adamsberg is accused of her murder. She has three short stabs across her stomach, the mark of the Trident. Now Adamsberg, who was drunk when this happened and wonders whether he actually killed her, has to clear his name and to lure out the real killer. Adamsberg spends most of the rest of the book as a fugitive working his schemes. Fortunately his friends believe in his innocence. As usual with Vargas the characters are quirky in the extreme, and represent a cabinet of curiosities. Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand is a thing of beauty, charm and wit. The writing is exquisite. Fred Vargas is a a master writer. She is in a league of her own! Or order Wash This Blood Clean From my Hand from Bokkilden. This Night’s Foul Work, by Fred VargasThis Night’s Foul Work is the fourth novel in the Adamsberg series translated into English. It is a playful, interesting and somewhat implausible crime books, but the writing is so great 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. There is insanity and irrationality enough in this book 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, relaxed, full of humor, and lots more. What can I say?
This Night’s Foul Work is entertaining in the extreme. |
Siste 10 bokanmeldelserSprengeren, av Liza Marklund |
and 
by Fred Vargas from amazon UK as well. 
the implausible part doesn't really matter much.
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. 