Customer Reviews

The Chalk Circle Man

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The first novel in a great series by Fred Vargas, who has created a most unique "hero" in the person of Inspector Adamsberg. I love the way his mind works( or doesn't:-). I love the secondary characters who act as foils for the intuitive Adamsberg. They reason logically and most know a great many more details about the world than does Adamsberg. Yet, it is the seemingly bumbling Adamberg who reaches the correct conclusion through his superb ability to associate many disparate details and use pattern thinking to find the truth. I cannot wait for more of these wonderful novels to be translated into English. I have all that are currently available and I highly recommend each and every one of them.

I became an enthusiastic fan of Fred Vargas and Commissaire Adamsberg after I picked up and read This Night's Foul Work. I have been working my way backwards though the series and discovering the source of the relationships between the main characters. While The Chalk Circle Man introduces Commissaire Adamsberg and his unique approach to solving crimes, it lacks the rich and clever language that makes the later Adamsberg novels sparkle. I enjoyed it for the background of the characters and now appreciate the fantastic growth of Fred Vargas as a writer. Don't miss this series, it is a gem.

Another customer reviewer summed it up best: this series and especially this book is "a gem". I've heard of Fred Vargas for a long while but kept resisting trying her novels (perhaps it was the dreary black and white cover art?). My only complaint is that I waited so long. I started with The Three Evangelists, a stand-alone novel, then picked up the Chalk Circle Man, the first in her series. The main character, Paris Commissaire Adamsberg, is an endearing oddball of sorts. In both his personal and professional lives, people have a difficult time figuing him out which naturally sets him apart from the crowd and often makes life lonely.

I was impressed with the characters, plotting, writing style (including the excellent translation) and the realistic depiction of French people and culture. For fans of international crime fiction, or Simenon/Maigret, do yourself a favor and read The Chalk Circle Man.

Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg grew up in the foothills of the Pyrenees, became a policeman at the age of twenty-five, and after a series of promotions and the passage of twenty years, he finds himself as Commissaire in Paris. Back home Adamsberg was something of a legend:

"You sit around daydreaming, staring at the wall, or doodling on a bit of paper as if you had all the time and knowledge in the world, and then one day you swan in, cool as a cucumber, and say 'Arrest the priest. He strangled the child to stop him talking.'"


Great things are expected of him in Paris, but when he focuses on a case that makes everyone else laugh, some begin to wonder if Adamsberg's reputation is all hype.

Almost everyone in Paris is laughing over The Chalk Circle Man, and they scan the newspapers each day to see what bizarre object has been enclosed in a blue chalk circle. Will it be another beer can? Or how about another trombone? Only Adamsberg doesn't think it's funny, and when the next blue chalk circle is around the body of a woman whose throat has been slashed, people begin to realize that the quirky policeman may not be a hayseed after all.

I loved this book. The translation by Sian Reynolds was excellent, and I felt as though I were walking the streets of Paris with Adamsberg. The plot had enough twists and turns in it that, although I'd deduced some things as I read, I was still surprised at the end and laughed with pleasure.

Excellent translation, strong sense of place, nice twisty plot... all those things are important, but it's the characters who stick with me the most. Adamsberg who lets no one keep him from conducting investigations his way. Mathilde, a woman who follows random people through the streets of Paris, observes them, and often takes them under her wing. And Clémence, a septuagenarian who hasn't given up on love and is an avid follower of the "lonely hearts" ads in the newspapers. These characters are what make The Chalk Circle Man sparkle, and they are what make this book memorable.

Comin' through, folks! Comin' through! I've got to get my hands on the second book in this series!

Vargas tells a leisurely, bittersweet tale. This is no book for anyone looking for a punchy thriller. Commissaire Adamsberg is a ruminative, introspective man. He understands things about people and sees patterns in events that nobody else understands or sees. He's a melancholy character, misunderstood and lonely, yearning for his petite chérie Camille, who left him without a word. A man from the Pyrenées with a reputation for cracking the most baffling cases, he is now the head of a Parisian police detective team.

When mysterious chalk circles begin appearing on the streets, drawn around various odd small objects and inscribed with the slogan "Victor, woe's in store, what are you out here for?" Adamsberg knows, as he tells his colleague Danglard, that eventually something much bigger will be found in a circle. Something like a murder victim. Of course, he is correct and Adamsberg leads an investigation that introduces him to several quirky, difficult and intriguing characters. The eventual resolution of the mystery is satisfying.

This is the first of the Commissaire Adamsberg mystery, though it was only recently translated into English. The Adamsberg series doesn't have to be read in order, though this does make a good introduction to Adamsberg and Danglard.

I enjoyed the interesting characters. The book held my interest until the last thirty or so pages when the solution to the murders was disclosed. At that point, I thought the ending was a real disapointment. The solution made no sense to me for a variety of reasons.

I plan to try another book by the same auther, to see if the plot is handled better in the second book.

Blue chalk circles are drawn around odd discarded objects around the sidewalks of Paris. Nothing appears to connect these objects, ranging from a watch strap, a paperclip, a screwdriver, a mangled cat, an ice cream cone, among others. Nothing to really raise the suspicion that they may be the portent of something more sinister among the city's residents. Nothing at least, except to Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsburg who's been transferred to Paris.

The first in the series, we are introduced to this gentle and unassuming police commissioner who appears somewhat vague to his team, especially the meticulous Inspector Danglard. However unorthodox though his thought process, (does he even have one, his team wonders) none can question his ability to deliver the answers to the puzzling crimes they have to deal with. And he is right on the money once again, he warned that the blue chalk circles are not as innocent as they may appear. And he's proven right when the first murdered victim is found within a blue chalk circle.

The motive for the murder and subsequent murders appear elusive as does a real suspect. Vargas has the skill to present seemingly innocuous bits of information to us through the story, and then surprising us with their importance later and tying them all together at the end with a nice red bow.

How to make a name in crime writing? Fred Vargas turned the genre upside down by breaking as many conventions as possible with this first novel (1996) about Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg (J-BA), newly promoted to Paris, startling his staff with his weird personality and management style. Unlike his predecessor who barked orders, J-BA is detached, not indifferent, but still, a hard to follow quantity.
In his Pyrenees homeland, he baffled colleagues with his case-solving abilities, done without induction or deduction, but based on instinct, intuition, feelings and emotions, always confirmed by forensic evidence from colleagues and many confessions. Ruefully, he confesses in this book that he has never misread another person.
His first case in Paris involves a mysterious person who draws blue circles with chalk around small objects on the pavement. It attracts the attention of Paris newspapers. After dozens of reports about all sorts of innocent items found, J-BA feels that the circling in blue chalk exudes cruelty. When a dead mouse, than a dead cat are found in the middle of fresh blue circles, he knows this is not a prank. This will get bigger... And sure enough, soon after a 51-year old woman is found in another blue circle, her throat cut, dead. Now J-BA has a case he felt was coming along. Will it be just this one murder or are more to come? That is for readers to find out.
In her native France, Fred Vargas is a bestseller author. She is a historian, archaeologist, writer and activist. Her seven or eight sequels to this, J-BA's first appearance have sold well in France, and so well in EN translation to convince publishers to extend the series again and again. But straightlaced Germany has shown little enthusiasm.
What explains the success of this book and the ensuing series? FV's books appeal more to women than to men. They deal with feelings rather than with violence or results, with assertive women dealing with meek, scatter-brained men like J-BA. This book and its sequels are recommended for readers who enjoy bizarre plots and eccentric characters, solving cryptograms, France, and lateral thinking.

The first line of Fred Vargas' "The Chalk Circle Man" (Penguin 1996)presents us with a shock and ultimately a lie. Mathilde Forestier is writing in her diary about a handsome man standing too close to her at a bar. To her, he is a stranger or is he? So begins a novel--a Le Rompol-- a French police procedural, featuring Commissaire Adamsberg, one of the stranger literary detectives in a genre populated by bizarre detectives. Adamsberg intuits rather than deduces; he is no Sherlock Holmes. Feelings predominate, which causes consternation among his fellow police officers.

The novel moves beyond Mathilde Forestier's meeting with the man in the bar to Adamsberg's appointment as Commissaire of the 5th arrondissement in Paris and his investigation of the death of a textile merchant, murdered in his own warehouse. While other officers use scientific methods, Adamsberg sits and doodles on a pad or the wall, whatever is convenient, and allows the impressions of the case to flow over him. If someone asks him what he thinks, he cannot respond, because he doesn't know; instead, he expresses what he feels and, in this case, he feels that someone harbors a very personal grudge against the deceased. So while the other policemen interview disgruntled clients, Adamsberg keeps an eye on the dead man's stepson, "Patrice Vernoux, a fine-featured, romantic looking young man of twenty-three." He watches the young man until he knows and then he assigns his favorite officer Adrien Danglard, "a man who dressed impeccably in order to compensate for his unprepossessing looks and pear-shaped figure" to bring the young man in and question him. Danglard is logical and does not see a connection between the young man and the murderer; besides, the young man has an alibi, his fiance vouches for his whereabouts. But, of course, this mystery is just the appetizer, a more bizarre tales awaits us. This murder simply introduces Adamsberg and his team.

For four months prior to the resolution of the warehouse murder, Adamsberg has been following newspaper reports of chalk circles appearing throughout Paris. Each circle contains an item of some sort and the populace has become obsessed with their semiotic significance. Adamsberg believes the circles mean one thing--trouble-- and he begins to think about them, trying to anticipate their pattern. Soon he is proven right again when a female corpse, almost beheaded, is found in a chalk circle. Now the game is afoot and Adamsberg works quickly before the next body appears.

Vargas' novel is claustrophobic, dreamlike, and romantic. As Jeanne Guyon writes: "Fred Vargas a inventé un genre romanesque qui n'appartient qu'à elle : le Rompol. Objet essentiellement poétique, il n'est pas noir mais nocturne, c'est-à-dire qu'il plonge le lecteur dans le monde onirique de ces nuits d'enfance où l'on joue à se faire peur, mais de façon ô combien grave et sérieuse, car le pouvoir donné à l'imaginaire libéré est total. C'est cette liberté de ton, cette capacité à retrouver la grâce fragile de nos émotions primordiales, cette alchimie verbale qui secoue la pesanteur du réel, qui sont la marque d'une romancière à la voix unique dans le polar d'aujourd'hui. Les personnages qui peuplent ses livres sont aussi anarchistes et lunaires que savants. Qu'ils soient férus d'Antiquité ou océanographes, le regard qu'ils posent sur le monde combat le conformisme et l'ordre établi avec pour arme la fantaisie et l'humour." To quickly paraphrase Guyon, Vargas' novel plunges the reader into a dreamworld, a world where children like to go (imagine) in order to scare themselves but also a world that is sober and serious.

"The Chalk Circle Man" surprised me. Several times I thought I had figured the mystery out and then was proven wrong, even though Vargas dropped the clues early. All in all a very satisfying novel with a very unique and appealing detective. But as I said above, it is claustrophobic, closed-in on itself, unrealistic in the sense that no police officer would work as Adamsberg does, but, of course, that is not the point. Ultimately, Vargas wants to talk about character not procedure. Hers is a novel of mood and dream, desire and romance.

If you like your sleuths to be men and women of action, this might not be your cup of tea. Commissaire Adamsberg is a different kind of detective. He thinks, he reasons, he philosophizes, he talks... and talks. Other characters are similarly long-winded. It's not boring, just another take on how to solve a crime. The mystery of the chalk circles is enticing, and Adamsberg's ability to anticipate a murder that hasn't yet occurred is intriguing. The characters are either interesting oddballs or unbelievable concoctions, depending on your expectations. It's the kind of book you'll either love or throw across the room. I stuck with it, and I'm glad I did.