Have Mercy on Us All by
Fred Vargas
hbk out October 03
Published by Harvill
at £12.99
Do not make the same mistake that I did. 'Fred' Vargas is not the hard-boiled male that
enthusiasm in some quarters had indicated, but an attractive young woman with a
background in archaeology. (I'll stick to one part of my self-contructed myth however
she may still be an admirer of Orson Welles.) And the only thing 'noir' about
her first novel to be published over here (it's her eighth in France) is the charcoal
smeared over the bodies that are discovered quite late in the book. Rather she operates
in that seemingly current mode of French whimsy, somewhere between the hard edge
of a Daniel Pennac or of the recent film Belleville Rendezvous, and that gentler
variety apparent in Amélie and the work of Jacques Tati. Indeed it is worth
mentioning that David Bellos, Vargas's sympathetic translator, was once an excellent
biographer of that great French comic.
Cue Joss le Guern, once a Breton fisherman, now town crier to the 14th
arrondissement of Paris. At this point you may wonder if you are even in the 21st
century (it took a mention of Rolaride, the local skate shop footwear, not fish to wrench
this reader into the present). You are certainly in some kind of Parisian never-never
land, because for some weeks now Joss has been reading out curious passages in old
French to his growing audience, one of whom is Hervé Decambrais, local scholar,
philanthropic landlord and proprietor of Even Keel Counselling. To Decambrais
these passages are somehow familiar.
Vargas's sleuth is Commissaire Principal Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, introduced
as looking like "a pig's breakfast" (a rare infelicity from translator Bellos). The
kindly, intuitive and disorganised Adamsberg, along with Danglard, his left-hand man
(right-hand somehow does him no credit) make a wonderful pair of complementary
minds; Adamsberg "woolly" and wandering, Danglard, "trained and powerful". Thus,
when Decambrais comes forward with his suspicions, the two policemen are quick to
connect his information with the recent incidence of handpainted backwards looking
figure '4s' in the neighbourhood. The game's afoot!
This is a delightfully written novel, unmistakably Gallic (though set in a location
short on visual specifics), with what appears to be immaculate historical background.
Not without seriousness though, for Adamsberg "guilt versus the appearance of guilt"
is "the only issue". Don't worry too much about the plot. Whilst I recognise that it
goes with the territory, it's far-fetched and totally unlikely. Rejoice however in its
leisurely pace, made to savour, and its gallery of eccentrics, fussed over and
memorably captured. The novel ends on a note of entrancing ambiguity. I suspect that
you will be looking out for the next Adamsberg novel with something approaching
huge anticipation. Soon please.
Have Mercy on Us All by
Fred Vargas
