The Chalk Circle Man

May 18, 2009
Fans of Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, the sleuth who doesn’t do deductive reasoning, will welcome the first in Vargas’s inspired crime series (This Night’s Foul Work
; Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand
), originally published in France in 1990. Newly transferred from his home in the Pyrenees to Paris, the 45-year-old Adamsberg arrives with a reputation for solving big cases, though his diffident manner doesn’t impress his colleague and foil, Adrien Danglard. A solitary man drawing blue chalk circles at night around stray objects in Paris streets manages to create a media sensation, but Adamsberg senses evil behind the act. When the corpse of a woman is found encircled in chalk, he’s proven right. Adamsberg’s indirect approach, his ability to sense cruelty and to let solutions percolate to the surface make him one of the more intriguing police detectives in a long time.

June 15, 2009
An eccentric Parisian killer baffles professional and amateur sleuths alike.

Impulsive oceanographer Mathilde Forestier becomes more than a bit obsessed with Charles Reyer, an impossibly handsome blind man she meets on the terrace of the Caf Saint-Jacques. Because she habitually wanders the streets of Paris, she makes herself responsible for finding and helping him. When success in this endeavor eludes her, Mathilde goes for assistance to the police headquarters of the 5th arrondissement, to which Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg (This Night's Foul Work, 2008, etc.) has just been transferred. The charmingly quirky Adamsberg has taken Inspector Adrien Danglard under his wing as a protg, and the admiration is more than mutual; Danglard seems as obsessed with his boss as Mathilde is with Charles. Having recently solved a baffling murder case, Adamsberg finds Mathilde's whimsy entertaining, and they discuss the weird local phenomenon of The Chalk Circle Man, who has been drawing large circles accompanied by a cryptic message all over the city. Finally locating the frequently choleric Charles, Mathilde brings him into her household, which also includes impossibly sunny assistant Clmence Valmont, who's constantly scanning the personal ads for a lover despite her advanced age. When a murdered woman is found inside one of the chalk circles, the case becomes a serious police matter. Mathilde's claim that she knows the identity of the Chalk Circle Man, who may be merely the killer's unwitting accomplice, implicates her in murder.

As droll and fascinating as la ville lumi're itself.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

June 15, 2009
In the first of eight novels featuring Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg (last seen in the United States in "This Night's Foul Work"), the quirky commissaire has just been posted to police headquarters in the fifth arrondissement, where he is already renowned for his uncanny ability to solve murders by making leaps that defy logic. But after instantly solving one murder, he faces a much more complicated case: for four months, someone has been leaving blue chalk circles around found objects on the streets of Paris. While the city's intellectuals argue whether the circles are the work of a cynical con artist or a genuine madman, Adamsberg senses something far more sinister. Then the first of several corpses turn up inside a chalk circle. VERDICT As with other novels in this series, readers should settle in to be unsettled. Delight is found not so much in the details of plot as in the oddities of character. The crime, the suspects, and the commissaire are all pleasantly off-kilter and equally baffling. A definite pick for Francophile mystery buffs who also enjoy Georges Simenon's Maigret series and Pierre Magnan ("Death in the Truffle Wood").Ron Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2009
When European mystery authors make their way to the U.S., it often happens that their books are published out of order. So it is with this sixth Commissaire Adamsberg novel to appear here, which, in fact, is the series debut. Newly promoted from the provinces to a post in Paris, the Maigret-like Adamsbergwhose intuitive sleuthing combines the belief of a child and the philosophy of an old manquickly overcomes the doubts of his colleagues and homes in on the seemingly insignificant phenomenon of chalk circles being drawn at random points around the city, each circle enclosing a piece of urban detritus (a Coke can, a single shoe). Adamsberg senses that the circles will soon surround dead bodies, and so they do. In addition to introducing her hero, Vargas also provides backstory on a host of other ongoing series characters, including the white-wine-swilling Inspector Danglard, whose logical mindis continually tested by his new boss belief in instinct. Later installments ramp up the contrast between Vargascomic touch and her dark themes, butas a stage-setter, this one is required reading for series devotees.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)