The Chalk Circle Man (Commissaire Adamsberg Series #1)

by Fred Vargas, Sian Reynolds (Translator)

Overview

The debut mystery in the internationally bestselling Commissaire Adamsberg series-now available for the first time in the United States

Fred Vargas 's Commissaire Adamsberg mysteries are a sensation in France, consistently praised for their intelligence, wit, and macabre imagination. This first novel in the series introduces the unorthodox detective Commissaire Adamsberg-one of the most engaging characters in contemporary crime fiction.

When blue chalk circles begin to appear on the pavement in neighborhoods around Paris, Adamsberg is alone in thinking that they are far from amusing. As he studies each new circle and the increasingly bizarre objects they contain-empty beer cans, four trombones, a pigeon's foot, a doll's head-he senses the cruelty that lies within whoever is responsible. And when a circle is discovered with decidedly less banal contents-a woman with her throat slashed-Adamsberg knows that this is just the beginning.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143115953
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/30/2009
Series:	Commissaire Adamsberg Series , #1
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	94,821
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Fred Vargas is a French medieval historian and archaeologist who has a parallel career as a bestselling crime novelist. She adopted the pseudonym from her twin sister, an artist who works as Jo Vargas—after Ava Gardner’s character in The Barefoot Contessa. She has published ten mysteries, five of which feature Commissaire Adamsberg. Her detective fiction is published in 32 languages.

Read an Excerpt

Mathilde took out her diary and wrote: ‘the man sitting next to me has got one hell of a nerve.’

She sipped her beer and glanced once more at the neighbour on her left, a strikingly tall man who had been drumming his fingers on the café table for the past ten minutes.

She made another note in the diary: ‘He sat down too close to me, as if we knew each other, but I’ve never seen him before. No, I’m sure I’ve never seen him before. Not much else to say about him, except that he’s wearing dark glasses. I’m sitting on the terrace outside the Café Saint-Jacques, and I’ve ordered a glass of draught lager. I’m drinking it now. I’m concentrating as hard as I can on the beer. Can’t think of anything better to do.’

Mathilde’s neighbour went on drumming his fingers.

‘Something the matter?’ she asked.

Mathilde had a deep and very husky voice. The man guessed that here was a woman who smoked as much as she could get away with.

‘No, nothing. Why?’ he replied.

‘Just that it’s getting on my nerves, that noise you’re making on the tabletop. Everything’s setting my teeth on edge today.’

Mathilde finished her beer. Tasteless. Typical for a Sunday. Mathilde considered that she suffered more than most from the fairly widespread malaise she called seventh-day blues.

‘You’re about fifty, I’d guess?’ offered the man, without moving away from her.

‘Might be,’ said Mathilde.

She felt annoyed.What business was that of his? Just then, she had noticed that the stream of water from the fountain opposite the café was blowing in the wind and sprinkling drops on the arm of the stone cherub beneath: one of those little moments of eternity. And now here was some character spoiling the only moment of eternity of this particular seventh day.

Besides, people usually thought she looked ten years younger. As she told him.

‘Does it matter?’ asked the man. ‘I can’t guess ages the way other people do. But I imagine you’re rather beautiful, if I’m not mistaken.’

‘Is there something wrong with my face?’ asked Mathilde. ‘You don’t seem very sure about it.’

‘It’s not that. I certainly do imagine you’re beautiful,’ the man replied, ‘but I won’t swear to it.’

‘Please yourself,’ said Mathilde. ‘At any rate, you’re very good-looking, and I’ll swear to that, if it helps.Well, it always does help, doesn’t it? And now I’m going to leave you. I’m too edgy today to sit around talking to people like you.’

‘I’m not feeling so calm, either. I was going to see a flat to rent, but it was already taken. What about you?’

‘I let somebody I wanted to catch up with get away.’

‘A friend?’

‘No, a woman I was following in the metro. I’d taken lots of notes, and then, suddenly, I lost her. See what I mean?’

‘No, I don’t see at all.’

‘You’re not trying, you mean.’

‘Well, obviously I’m not trying.’

‘You are. You’re very trying.’

‘Yes, I am trying. And on top of that, I’m blind.’

‘Oh, Christ!’ said Mathilde. ‘I’m so sorry.’

The man turned towards her with a rather unkind smile.

‘Why are you sorry?’ he said. ‘It’s not your fault, is it?’

Mathilde told herself that she should just stop talking. But she also knew that she wouldn’t be able to manage that.

‘Whose fault is it, then?’ she asked.

The Beautiful Blind Man, as Mathilde had already named him in her head, reverted to his position, three-quarters turned away.

‘It was a lioness’s fault. I was dissecting it, because I was working on the locomotive system of the larger cats.Why the heck should we care about their locomotive system? Sometimes I would tell myself this is really cutting-edge stuff, other times I thought, oh for God’s sake, lions walk, they crouch, they pounce, and that’s it. Then one day I made a false move with a scalpel . . .’

‘And it squirted in your eyes.’

‘Yes. How did you know?’

‘There was this man once, he built the colonnade of the Louvre, and he was killed like that. A decomposed camel, laid out on a dissecting table. Still, that was a long time ago, and it was a camel. Quite a big difference, really.’

‘Well, rotten flesh is still rotten flesh. The ghastly muck went in my eyes. Everything went black. Couldn’t see a thing. Kaput.’

‘All because of a wretched lioness. I came across a creature like that once. How long ago was this?’

‘Eleven years now. She must be laughing her head off, the lioness, wherever she is. Well, I can laugh, sometimes, these days. Not at the time though. A month later I went back and trashed the lab — I threw bits of rotten tissue everywhere, I wanted it to go in everyone’s eyes. I smashed up the work of the team studying feline locomotion. But of course it gave me no satisfaction at all. In fact, it was a big let-down.’

‘What colour were your eyes?’

‘Black, like swifts, the sickles of the sky.’

‘And now what are they like?’

‘Nobody dares tell me. Black, red and white, I should think. People seem to choke when they see them. I suppose it’s a nasty sight. I just keep my glasses on all the time now.’

‘I’d like to see them,’ said Mathilde, ‘if you really want to know what they look like. Nasty sights don’t bother me.’

‘People say that, then they regret it.’

‘When I was diving one day, I got bitten on the leg by a shark.’

‘OK, I suppose that’s not a pretty sight either.’

‘What do you miss the most from not being able to see?’

‘Your questions are getting on my nerves. We’re not going to spend all day talking about lions and sharks and suchlike beasts, are we?’

‘No, I suppose not.’

‘Well, if you must know, I miss girls. Not very original, is it?’

‘The girls cleared off, did they, after the lioness?’

‘Looks like that. You didn’t say why you were following the woman.’

‘No reason. I follow lots of people, actually. Can’t help it, it’s an addiction.’

‘After the shark bite, did your lover clear off?’

‘He left, and others came along.’

‘You’re an unusual woman.’

‘Why do you say that?’ asked Mathilde.

‘Because of your voice.’

‘What do you hear in people’s voices?’

‘Oh, come on, I’m not going to tell you that! What would I have left, for pity’s sake? You’ve got to let a blind man have some advantages, madame,’ said the man, with a smile.

He stood up to leave. He hadn’t even finished his drink.

‘Wait. What’s your name?’ Mathilde asked.

The man hesitated.

‘Charles Reyer,’ he said.

‘Thank you. My name’s Mathilde.’

The Beautiful Blind Man said that was a rather classy name, that there was a queen called Mathilde who had reigned in England in the twelfth century. Then he walked off, guiding himself with a finger along the wall. Mathilde couldn’t care less about the twelfth century, and she finished the blind man’s drink, with a frown.

For a long time afterwards, for weeks during her excursions along the pavements of Paris, Mathilde looked out for the blind man, out of the corner of her eye. But she didn’t find him. She guessed his age as about thirty-five.

Reading Group Guide

INTRODUCTION
“Is this a practical joke, or the work of some half-baked philosopher? Whatever it is, the blue chalk circles are still sprouting like night-time weeds on the capital’s pavements, and they’re starting to attract the attention of Parisian intellectuals” (p. 22).

There is little that excites the inhabitants of a city as cosmopolitan as Paris, but it was, perhaps, the very randomness of the blue chalk circles that first created such a stir. Under cover of night, someone—likely a man, according to the press—has been drawing blue circles around a motley assortment of found objects. A twig, a dog turd, and a bottle top are just three of the more than sixty items encircled and marked with the cryptic words, “Victor, woe’s in store, what are you out here for?” (p. 25). Speculation runs high, but the police remain indifferent to the man’s identity until the latest circle surrounds “a woman with her throat cut, staring up at the sky” (p. 57).

Comissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg is new to the Paris police force. A recent transfer, Adamsberg is also something of a celebrity, having solved an astonishing number of murder cases in his native Pyrenees. He alone found something menacing about the chalk circles and insisted that the circles be photographed and cataloged well before they proved to be deadly. Now, he can only sit and wait until more circles—and more bodies—appear.

But—much to his subordinates’ confusion—Adamsberg is not the sort to become consumed by a case, however peculiar. Lately, he has been preoccupied by the thoughts of two women—one new and the other his long lost love. Shortly before the murder victim was found, a woman named Mathilde Forestier had appeared at the station demanding that the police help her find Charles Reyer, the “Beautiful Blind Man” (p. 5) she had recently met in a café. A famous marine researcher with a quirky theory about the days of the week and a penchant for trailing and surrounding herself with some most unusual friends, Mathilde intrigues the otherwise jaded Adamsberg.

It has been nine years since Camille, Adamsberg’s “petite chérie,” abandoned him in a Cairo hotel, but she has never ceased to haunt him. He had taken some solace in imagining her adventures in some distant land until an unwelcome possibility presented itself—she might be dead. “What would be the point after that of bothering to track down murderers, or counting the spoonfuls of sugar in his coffee . . . if Camille wasn’t somewhere on the planet?” (p.71). He contacts Mathilde, and in exchange for helping her find Charles, she, in return, promises to help him find news of Camille.

Soon, the handsome but surly blind man joins Mathilde’s household, where she and Clémence Valmont, the spectacularly ugly septuagenarian assistant she similarly collected, catalog her undersea findings. But as the murderer claims another victim, and it becomes clear that Mathilde contrived her meeting with Adamsberg and knows far more about the Chalk Circle Man than she at first revealed.

The latest installment in Fred Vargas’ internationally best-selling mystery series to be available in English, The Chalk Circle Man features Paris’s tantalizing new commissaire along with an irresistible cast of eccentric characters. Stylish and deliciously gruesome, they are rapidly solidifying Adamsberg a prestigious place in the pantheon of literary detectives.

ABOUT FRED VARGAS

Fred Vargas is the pseudonym of French historian, archaeologist, and writer Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau. She is a number-one bestselling author in France and the author of eleven novels, including eight featuring Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg. Her works have been published in thirty-eight countries.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

What do you make of Mathilde’s section theory regarding the days of the week? Have you a similar theory of your own?

Do you, like Adamsberg, feel that murderers are a breed apart and “ooze cruelty” (p. 17), or do you agree with Danglard and believe that everyone has the potential to kill?

“He wouldn’t have been entirely misleading anyone if he had said to them ‘Yes, I know Wahiguya, I even lived there for a while’ ” (p. 71). Have you ever loved someone so much you felt as if his or her experiences were your own?

Charles responds more positively to Mathilde’s harsh honesty than any kindness others have shown him. Do you think he is unusual in this respect?

Do Danglard’s five children fuel his alcoholism or prevent him from complete collapse?

How do the names of the Sawback Angelshark, the Flying Gurnard, and the Three-Spined Stickleback flats evoke their tenants?

What do the comments of Adamsberg’s offstage sister lend to the novel? How does the knowledge that he has five sisters affect your understanding of his character?

It is the Chalk Circle Man’s odor—described as rotting apples, vinegar, and Calvados by various witnesses—which gives Adamsberg his biggest clue to tracking him down. Are there any other instances in which senses other than sight reveal important information? How is Charles’s blindness a metaphor for the novel as a whole?

How do Adamsberg and The Chalk Circle Man differ from American detectives and mysteries? Which do you prefer, and why?

Spoiler Warning: Don’t read on if you don’t what to know whodunit!

What was it that drew Mathilde to Charles and Clémence? Both of them seem to have collected her rather than the reverse. Do you think she is as in control as she thinks she is?

How satisfying is the conclusion of Adamsberg’s investigation? Would you have preferred Clémence to be the killer? Why or why not?

Initially, it seems as if frustrated love was at the root of the murders but it turns out to be pride. What do you think motivates most murderers?

Editorial Reviews

Vargas writes with the startling imagery and absurdist wit of a latter-day Anouilh, about fey characters who live in a wonderful bohemian world that never was but should have been.
—The New York Times

Marilyn Stasio

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. (July)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly

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

—Ron Terpening

Library Journal

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 Cafe 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 protege, 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 Clemence 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 lumiere itself.

Kirkus Reviews

"Like legions of other devoted readers, I've become addicted to the adventures of Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg. . . . If you've already discovered Adamsberg, this novel is essential reading. If you haven't, this is the perfect place to begin."
— Margaret Cannon, The Globe and Mail

"If you haven't cottoned on to Vargas's brilliant Adamsberg detective stories, you're missing a treat."
— Scotland on Sunday

"The Chalk Circle Man showcases Vargas' charms as a crime writer — it's hauntingly written, with intensely drawn characters and a plot that smoulders with psychological suspense."
— The Age

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