Seeking Whom He May Devour

After reading The Chalk Circle Man, I was hungry for another Chief Inspector Adamsberg mystery. This book shows the inspector as dreamy and illogical as ever. How he gets lured out of Paris to the French Alps to join a manhunt for a werewolf is a complicated story. The fact that a crazy redhead is trying to assassinate him provides some motivation to leave Paris. So does the fact that he's spotted Camille, the runaway love of his life, in a TV news story. Camille seems to have settled in a remote area where sheep are being savaged by a wolf of abnormal size. Some superstitious locals believe it's the work of a werewolf, especially when the creature starts killing people. Through a convoluted train of events, Adamsberg joins a motley crew in a lorry stinking of sheep to hunt down the big bad wolf, now assumed to have a human master (a surly local who has mysteriously disappeared). Camille is driving the lorry. She's a wonderful combination of the eternal feminine and a masculine mind obsessed with tools. Also on board are Watchee, an ancient shepherd who never sleeps, and a young black man whose adopted mother was killed by the man-wolf. To add to the confusion, Camille is having an affair with a tall blond muscular Canadian, a specialist in grizzly bears. The guy is hot - a formidable rival for the short, unglamorous Adamsberg. No review can possibly do justice to the bizarre happenings and quirky characters in this story. Better to read the book. Don't be put off by the rather pretentious title. The much better French title was L'Homme à l'envers, which I think means Inside-out Man. In the hinterlands of France, werewolves are thought to be hairless in their human form. If you cut them open, you'd find their wolf hair under the skin.

Seeking Whom He May Devour (French 1999, English 2004) is set in the French Alps. The villagers at first believe a rogue wolf is responsible for some sheep savagings, but when a woman is killed in the same manner, rumors of a werewolf begin to circulate. Soliman, the woman's young adopted son, Watchee, her ancient head shepherd, and Camille, a young musician recruited to drive the sheep lorry, head out in pursuit of a loner who disappears immediately after the murder. When the trio realize they are in over their heads, Camille contacts her old friend Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg for assistance. The solution of the mystery is clever and unexpected, but the true charm of this book is the eccentric road trip which brings together four vivid and unique personalities: Soliman creates fables to explain reality, Camille reads The A to Z of Tools for Trade and Craft for relaxation, Watchee lives and breathes sheep, and Adamsberg floats in a cloud of intuition, waiting for the facts to settle into an understandable pattern. http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/V_Authors/Vargas_Fred.html

Fred Vargas is my favorite new find. She writes intelligently about interesting characters. With the Euro at such crazy rates, I can only afford to go to Europe in books, and this series gives a great sense of France.

In the Southern Alps-Maritimes section of France, four sheep are killed at Ventebrune; nine at Pierrefort. The locals insist it is the brutal work of a feral pack of wolves led by a gigantic beast like none ever seen before. They believe this beast will turn to devouring humans soon. At Les Ecart five sheep belonging to Suzanne Rosselin are killed and three others badly wounded. Canadian Lawrence Johnstone works with wolves at the Mercantour National Park; he investigates the sheep killings and knows Suzanne through his live-in lover Camille. Suzanne accuses hermit-like Monsieur Massart of being a werewolf, but she dies when the giant beast attacks her. Johnstone thinks Suzanne was close to the truth, but Massart is not a supernatural creature, but has trained a wolf to do his killings. The local police still believe a large wolf is the culprit while everyone else concurs with the late Suzanne's theory of a werewolf on the prowl. As other people die, Commisaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg begins his inquiry though he is unhappy that his former lover Camille is here with the Canadian. He scans the police reports until he finds a clue that makes him believe he knows exactly what is happening. SEEKING WHOM HE MAY DEVOUR is a fantastic French police procedural starring an intelligent eccentric commissaire and a delightful support cast though support is a loose term in this superior thriller as Jean-Baptiste enters the fray later than usual for a hero. That will not matter as readers will join the locals debating who or what is the killer, wolves, werewolf, or human predator. Fred Vargas provides a tense gripping tale that readers will fully appreciate from start to finish. Harriet Klausner

Man eating wolves in the Mercantour National Forest in northern Provence menace the community. Off beat characters, an enjoyable plot and an ending worth waiting for in this short fast-paced mystery.