What I'm Reading: Fred Vargas
Jan. 16th, 2019 10:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stonepicnicking_okapiFrench mystery/crime author Fred Vargas is my favourite author writing today, and while I like her Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg series (of which there are eight translated into English), I absolutely love her The Three Evangelists [translated from French, three in the series: The Three Evangelist, Dog Will Have its Day, and The Accordionist]. I ordered all 3 from Abe books and re-read the first two so I could be in the right mood for the third.
I would recommend the first in the series. It tells how three historians come to share a house in Paris. There is Mathias, who studies prehistoric life; Marc, who studies the Middle Ages; and Lucien, who studies the Great War. Marc’s godfather, Old Man Vandoosler, an old disgraced police officer, comes to live with them, too [he is the one who calls them the three evanglests: St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke]. The historians are quirky and thoroughly engrossed in their respective areas. Something odd happens to their neighbour soon after they move in, and that’s the mystery.
The second two focus on Kehlweiler, a former inspector of the Ministry of the Interior, who is a peer of Old Man Vandoolser. He comes across two mysteries and asks the evangelists (mostly Marc) for assistance in solving. He’s quirky, too. He has a toad he carries around named Bufo. The second two get a bit grim with their mysteries (think Law & Order SVU or maybe Val McDermid, and the AO3 tags would be past torture, past sexual assault) but if you like them, then I would definitely check out the Abamsberg series. The second dips into the grim suddenly, but the third wallows a bit. That’s why I recommend more widely the first.
I also read The Face of a Stranger by Anne Perry. The first in the William Monk series. He’s a Victorian police officer in London who gets into a coach accident and loses his memory but pretends he hasn’t to investigate a case. Meanwhile, he’s trying to figure out who he is. I liked the plot. It reminded me of how much I like amnesia fic. I did not like the Girl, even though she was a Crimean War nurse. I skipped over the chapters that were the women’s POV (I feel very guilty about that) but I just didn’t care about anything but the mystery of Monk and the case (which I figured out before Monk did!).
I also read two by Patricia Moyes: Dead Men Don’t Ski and The Coconut Killings. The first is the first in the Inspector Tibbett series. He’s a Scotland Yard inspector. It was published in 1959 and I think it’s set then too. Tibbett and his wife Emmy (who is normal and not annoying at all) go to an Italian ski resort that can only be accessed by a chair lift. And there’s a murder (guess where?). In The Coconut Killings, the Tibbetts are on a Caribbean island. It’s #13 in the series and not as interesting. There is some discussion of racial tensions and violence.
I forced myself to get through The Case of the Constant Suicides by John Dickson Carr. It is a Gideon Fell mystery (#12). I disliked the two protagonists (a pair of squabbling academics who end up falling in love) and the notion that English people lose their minds and morals when they travel to Scotland. BUT it is a master class in the locked room mystery and for that, I’ll put up with Old Hollywood bicker-bicker-let’s-get-married. It is perfect for ideas for my own locked room fic.
I would recommend the first in the series. It tells how three historians come to share a house in Paris. There is Mathias, who studies prehistoric life; Marc, who studies the Middle Ages; and Lucien, who studies the Great War. Marc’s godfather, Old Man Vandoosler, an old disgraced police officer, comes to live with them, too [he is the one who calls them the three evanglests: St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke]. The historians are quirky and thoroughly engrossed in their respective areas. Something odd happens to their neighbour soon after they move in, and that’s the mystery.
The second two focus on Kehlweiler, a former inspector of the Ministry of the Interior, who is a peer of Old Man Vandoolser. He comes across two mysteries and asks the evangelists (mostly Marc) for assistance in solving. He’s quirky, too. He has a toad he carries around named Bufo. The second two get a bit grim with their mysteries (think Law & Order SVU or maybe Val McDermid, and the AO3 tags would be past torture, past sexual assault) but if you like them, then I would definitely check out the Abamsberg series. The second dips into the grim suddenly, but the third wallows a bit. That’s why I recommend more widely the first.
I also read The Face of a Stranger by Anne Perry. The first in the William Monk series. He’s a Victorian police officer in London who gets into a coach accident and loses his memory but pretends he hasn’t to investigate a case. Meanwhile, he’s trying to figure out who he is. I liked the plot. It reminded me of how much I like amnesia fic. I did not like the Girl, even though she was a Crimean War nurse. I skipped over the chapters that were the women’s POV (I feel very guilty about that) but I just didn’t care about anything but the mystery of Monk and the case (which I figured out before Monk did!).
I also read two by Patricia Moyes: Dead Men Don’t Ski and The Coconut Killings. The first is the first in the Inspector Tibbett series. He’s a Scotland Yard inspector. It was published in 1959 and I think it’s set then too. Tibbett and his wife Emmy (who is normal and not annoying at all) go to an Italian ski resort that can only be accessed by a chair lift. And there’s a murder (guess where?). In The Coconut Killings, the Tibbetts are on a Caribbean island. It’s #13 in the series and not as interesting. There is some discussion of racial tensions and violence.
I forced myself to get through The Case of the Constant Suicides by John Dickson Carr. It is a Gideon Fell mystery (#12). I disliked the two protagonists (a pair of squabbling academics who end up falling in love) and the notion that English people lose their minds and morals when they travel to Scotland. BUT it is a master class in the locked room mystery and for that, I’ll put up with Old Hollywood bicker-bicker-let’s-get-married. It is perfect for ideas for my own locked room fic.