Yesterday I mentioned that I hadn't yet met the sleuth, or in this case the detective, in Fred Vargas's Have Mercy on Us All. Well, today I have. In a comment on a recent post another reader called Fred Vargas's mysteries 'quirky' (but very readable) and the more I read, the more I think I have to agree with that description. There's something weird going on in the story and I think it's going to get weirder.
Joss Le Guern is a modern-day town crier. I had heard of such a thing, but didn't realize they might still exist. For a small fee Joss will read out notices that people leave him. Three times a day, every day, he returns to the same spot close to the Gare Montparnasse and reads out announcements of things for sale, love letters, general annoyances, whatever someone wants to share with the neighborhood. Joss takes these requests and separates them into two piles--the "can dos" and the "better nots". Some messages are fine for general consumption and others are better left unread. But there have been some odd messages turning up as well--not really fit for either pile, but they get read anyway. Messages referring to the Black Death.
So that's a bit of the backstory. Still no crime has been committed, though a resident of a local neighborhood is frightened to see a strange symbol painted on all the doors in the complex where she lives. They are the number "4", written backwards and notches through the outer leg of the cross. At the moment there is no connection between these odd messages and the black painted numbers, but it's been brought to the attention of the Brigade Criminelle, which is where we find Detective Commissaire Adamsberg. Sorry, a bit of a build up to my teaser, but it seemed like it needed a little explanation. A picture is forming in my mind:
"In his early youth, just when he'd left the Pyrennees, he'd discovered that there really were people who lived on paper, and he'd quickly come to regard them with considerable awe, a degree of pity and boundless gratitude. Adamsberg mostly liked to walk, muse and act, and he knew that his tastes inspired little awe and much pity in many of his colleagues."
His partner Danglard notes he's solved "a score and more mysteries through his walking, dreaming, straggly-thinking method" getting "surprising results of his impenetrable mental meanderings." And how about some visuals from the woman who found the odd "4" painted on her door:
"The man was short and dark, and he looked like a pig's breakfast. His hair was all tousled and he'd rolled his jacket sleeves halfway up his unshirted forearm. Looked like a guy with troubles to tell, just like she had."
Now I'm intrigued. I'm guessing he looked like a "pig's breakfast" means he's not an especially fastidious man. But he can obviously solve crimes, so I'll be following events closely. I usually like to start reading msyteries with the first book rather than jumping in somewhere in the middle, but things have been pretty clear so far. One review on the back cover called this "eccentric", but eccentric is good sometimes!