Fred Vargas is the pseudonym of Frederique Audoin-Rouzeau, who as an historian and archeologist is celebrated for her scholarly work on the Black Death.
As Fred Vargas, however, she is the master of intricate police procedurals, featuring Commissaire Adamsberg and his eclectic team. Vargas says that she relaxes from her academic work by writing crime fiction, successful crime fiction as she is the only author to have been awarded the CWA International Dagger three times.
In her previous novel, Climate of Fear, Vargas takes Adamsberg to Iceland and after a gruelling investigation he decides to stay. His trusted friend and deputy, Danglard fears, as This Poison Will Remain begins, that although for "an ordinary mortal who was simply tired, going off for rest and recuperation to a cold land of mist and fog might seem appropriate . . . for someone whose mind was already full of mist . . . seemed to him on the contrary dangerous, potentially heavy with consequence". Danglard is relieved when Adamsberg is recalled to Paris to help with the investigation into a woman who has been run over repeatedly. Who is guilty, her husband or her lover?
Adamsberg solves the crime in a day but then becomes obsessed with the death of three elderly men in Nimes, supposedly bitten by deadly recluse spiders. But recluse spiders are not deadly, rather timid and harmless. Panic has spread on social media and various theories are being discussed on the internet: the spiders have mutated, having absorbed insecticide and their venom has become deadly, or they have been impacted by global warming. The most dangerous spiders live in hot countries and because France has suffered one of its hottest summers ever, the toxicity of the venom has increased.
Adamsberg is physically affected when talking about the spider, suffering a vague tension at the back of his neck. "This feeling had come over him for the first time . . . when he had come face to face with the recluse spider". He knows he has to investigate what he believes are three murders.
When he consults an expert at the Natural History Museum, he meets Irene Royer-Colombe, an elderly woman from Nimes who has overheard two of the dead men talking in a café about their time in an orphanage, La Misericorde and belonging to a gang of boys, "bad blood, a bad lot, and they liked doing evil things". The gang used recluse spiders to torment their victims.
Adamsberg is now convinced that members of the gang are being murdered in a series of revenge killings, but convincing his team is more difficult. This Poison Will Remain is clever, complex crime fiction, underpinned by the intellectual intricacies of Vargas' plot and the fascinating and varied personalities of her detectives.
- This Poison Will Remain, by Fred Vargas. Harvill Secker. $32.99.
