Seeking Whom He May Devour is book number two in Fred Vargas' series featuring Commissaire Adamsberg of the French police nationale, following The Chalk-Circle Man. In 2005, it was nominated for the CWA Gold Dagger Award. This novel is another one which I'd label as "crime light," and actually reminds me a great deal of Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano series. There are a host of quirky characters, a bit of humor, a chief inspector who isn't anywhere close to what one would consider normal, and a lot of local color. Also like the Montalbano series, my sense is that these books aren't written to focus mainly on the crime elements or the police procedural aspects, but rather on the people who populate these novels.The small village of Saint-Victor in The French Alps is the setting for this adventure, which begins with the report of the deaths of four sheep. This took place at Ventebrune, on Tuesday; on Thursday, nine more were found savaged at Pierrefort. As the number of dead sheep increases, the villagers begin to suspect that the culprit is a rogue wolf that roams the mountains. But after the savage death of Suzanne Rosselin -- the owner of the breeding station just west of Saint-Victor -- there are those who begin to suspect that perhaps it's something not of this world, and that the real killer is a werewolf. Suspicion falls on one Massart, who works in the municipal slaughterhouse, keeps to himself in his shack, and is rarely seen in the village. But what really makes some believe in Massart as a werewolf is the fact that he has no body hair. "Smooth-skinned as a choirboy," he fits the bill: the mark of the werewolf is that he wears his hair on the inside, and at night he "turns himself around and his hairy coat appears." This, as one person notes, makes him an "inside-out man," which reflects the original French title of this novel. After Suzanne's death Massart vanishes, leaving behind only a map with a specifically-marked route that includes the sites of the previous sheep slaughters. Convinced that it's their duty to go after Massart and rid the French countryside of this werewolf killer, two unlikely companions decide to go after him. First, there's Suzanne's adopted son Soliman, who had been found at the the village church as a baby. Soliman is black, and the villagers were a bit bewildered at seeing a black baby just left there, and it wasn't until Suzanne came along and picked him up that he was comforted. Suzanne had spent a great deal of time teaching Soliman about his African roots, and Soliman is constantly spouting often unfathomable African legends to apply to various situations. Second is old Watchee, Suzanne's shepherd at the breeding station. And to drive the old (and very stinky) cattle truck, Soliman and Watchee recruit Camille, the elusive, on-again/off-again love of Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg's life, who is now living in the village, composing music for a soap opera and working as a plumber. Her current love interest is a Canadian scientist who studies wolves in the wild, currently in the Mercantour National Park in France, near the village. As the strange trio sets out on the road, there are even more deaths, and they begin to realize that this project is beyond them. They need to find some help ...a "special sort of policeman. A very special flic. A flic who'd pass on all the info about giving us any grief, and who'd let us carry on tracking the vampire down.And as it just so happens, Camille knows just the guy -- Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, in Paris, at the police headquarters in the fifth arrondissement."While the mystery itself is a bit predictable, it's not really the who that counts, but rather the getting there that makes this story. Adamsberg is no ordinary cop -- he deals quite a bit in intuition, has his senses alert to odd situations, and from time to time gets little insights out of the blue as to when things are important. He has a good rapport with his colleagues, although they find him a bit strange, and an even better rapport with the common man. The rest of the characters are quirky, as is the dialogue from time to time. If not laugh-out-loud funny at times, there is a great deal of humor interlaced with the serious business of finding a killer and bringing the culprit to justice. The author is really good at bringing out the sense of place, down to the hairpin curves on a French mountain road or the stink of sheep fat. In short, there are many things to experience within this novel, and it's obvious that Vargas really enjoys writing these books. As I said earlier, this is a novel on the lighter side of crime, and so should appeal to readers who tend to stay away from more hardcore crime fiction. It's also a book for readers who enjoy quirky crimes, quirky people and a good laugh here and there, much (as also noted above) like the Salvo Montalbano series. Definitely recommended. I'm already on book #4 (Wash This Blood Clean From My Hands) on my way to the latest, An Uncertain Place, which is on this year's CWA International Dagger shortlist. You should probably read the series in order of publication, not English translation, because the whole Adamsberg/Camille relationship starts in book one and may be difficult to follow otherwise.
First Line: On Tuesday, four sheep were killed at Ventebrune in the French Alps. A small mountain village in the French Alps awakens each morning to the grisly sight of yet more sheep with their throats torn out. A local insists that it's the work of a werewolf, and when she is found killed in the same manner, people begin to wonder if she was right.Soon an unlikely little group forms of the murdered woman's son, one of her shepherds, and her friend Camille. They've decided that a local eccentric named Massart is the werewolf, and since he's nowhere to be seen, they're going to find his trail and catch him. On their comedy-of-errors road trip, it doesn't take them long to realize that they just don't have what it takes to apprehend a werewolf, and Camille summons Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg to help them. Adamsberg finds that there are many layers of buried secrets for his intuition to unravel.Adamsberg has been compared to Maigret, and I can't help but chuckle at his choice of venue for deep thinking: "The Waters of Liffey provided a first-rate solution to his dilemma. The only people in the bar were noisy, boozy Irishmen speaking what was for Adamsberg a completely hermetic tongue. He thought he must be one of the last people left on the planet to know not a single word of English. Such old-fashioned ignorance allowed him to fit happily into the Liffey, where he could enjoy the stream of life without being in any way inconvenienced by it. In this precious hidey-hole Adamsberg spent many an hour dreaming away, peacefully waiting for ideas to rise to the surface if his mind."The stars of Seeking Whom He May Devour are, without doubt, the wonderful cast of characters and the eerie, creepy atmosphere high in the mountains with few people around. Vargas came close a time or two to getting me to believe in werewolves.As much as I enjoyed the characters and the atmospheric setting, I did find the plot to be a bit of a letdown. When one of the characters was described, I knew that person was the killer immediately. If I hadn't known this so quickly, I think Vargas would have had the hair standing on the back of my neck. I missed that element of suspense in what was otherwise a very good book.I happened to read this book in the series out of order, skipping from the first book to the third. Vargas provided just enough backstory to keep me grounded without bogging down the plot.
Do You like book Seeking Whom He May Devour (2006)?
L'histoire commence lentement. Très lentement. Et elle se poursuit ainsi presque jusqu'au bout.Au début, on est tout de même pris par le suspens; on se demande qui est l'assassin, pourquoi il tue, etc. Mais très vite, l'histoire devient endormante et l'identité de l'assassin semble évidente.Ce dernier a d'ailleurs pris la fuite et trois personnages se lancent à sa poursuite... Et malgré cela, l'histoire reste toujours ennuyeuse. Il n'y a aucune surprise, aucune action.Les dialogues sont très répétitifs, beaucoup de mots et d'expressions reviennent de nombreuses fois. Le langage est très familier, ce qui m'a parfois un peu dérangée durant ma lecture.L'écrivain a donc tout fait pour créer une ambiance ennuyante mais très réaliste... et nous surprendre encore davantage avec la fin!En effet, la fin amène un retournement de situation époustouflant auquel on ne s'attend pas du tout et qui rattrape les précédentes pages d'ennuis!^^ Heureusement! Car grâce à cela, le livre remonte un peu dans l'estime du lecteur!
—Sarah
Talvolta arriva un punto nella carriera di un giallista affermato in cui non sa più come ravvivare il ciclo del proprio detective di punta e tira quindi fuori dal cappello un romanzo in cui compare poco, a tratti, entrando in scena solo quando assolutamente necessario. Tendenzialmente non è mai uno dei titoli memorabili della serie. La mia impressione è che, almeno agli inizi, Fred Vargas non sapesse cosa farsene di Adamsberg o come gestirlo al meglio come centro della narrazione. Dopo averlo usato come deus ex machina per gli Evangelisti, al secondo romanzo del ciclo a lui dedicato gli fa iniziare la partita in panchina, facendolo scendere in campo solo nelle fasi più avanzate del gioco. Contro ogni previsione, il tutto funziona a meraviglia: abbiamo la solita Francia periferica, piena d'amore, cibo e vitalità, abbia Camille, abbiamo un caso intrigante che sembra il primo tentativo di un "omicidio mitologico", filone da cui verrà fuori l'intenso, stupendo Un Luogo Incerto. Là erano i vampiri, qui un licantropo, un uomo a rovescio che risveglia antiche superstizioni contadine o un abile assassino in grado di servirsene a suo vantaggio? Postilla: nell'edizione Einaudi a c'è una nota che non porta da nessuna parte (cfr: "i poliziotti di Bourg al Calvaire" con la nota in piccolo sopra la e finale: ho sfogliato ovunque, ma a quanto pare è proprio una notazione fantasma).
—Gardy
I really liked a lot of things about this book. Eccentric and well drawn characters, marvellous sense of place, the ancient menace of wolves / wolf men made modern. Wasn't sure about the translation though. I think it was trying to keep a French idiom but it just ended up sounding a bit clunky and awkward (eg frequent use of old chap: I guess as a translation of mon vieux, but the overtones in English are just wrong...) There's a wonderful description of the policeman's instinctive, free, creative thought processes: 'THis is how Adamsberg used his brain, like an ocean that you trust entirely to feed you well, but which you've long ago given up trying to tame.' I loved that.
—Tracey Mathias
