Fred Vargas
It is not so easy to look for and find Fred Vargas' Paris. You could certainly start from the 13th arrondissement, the one in which Commissaire Jean Baptiste Adamsberg (her most famous character) is head of the Brigade Criminelle, the Serious Crime Squad. You could wander through the rues and boulevards of this district located on the Rive Gauche: Porte d'Italie, la Gare d'Austerlitz: from the Parisian Chinatown up to the Bibliothèque François Mitterrand which overlooks the Seine. And it is here, along the embankment, that you could probably bump into Adamsberg, the Maigret-like chief inspector, who prefers to walk and muse rather than reiterate the facts of the case.He is a "cloud shoveller", as Vargas defines him, an unconventional, gut-based, Paris cop who loves living his life at a slow pace, taking his own time and contemplating. He has a mind made up of tangled thoughts, similar to the scrawls he always makes on pieces of paper. He is a man who prefers to zigzag across situations and wait for the solutions instead of bothering himself trying to find them; he is a man who keeps his secrets to himself. "He's the opposite of me - said Vargas in an interview in the Guardian - Me, I wear myself out trying to get everything done, to resolve everything in my life. Sometimes I try to do things slowly, indifferently, like he does. It infuriates me. Writing Adamsberg calms me down". By following Adamsberg in his strolls along the Seine, his favourite promenade, time seems to slow down as the city unravels itself on the other side of the river, suspended between reality and unreality. Yes because, if you really look for the Paris described by this highly successful crime writer, you will only find it in the atmosphere she creates throughout the pages of her famous novels. Even though she describes realistic locations, the places she writes about are often mere fiction.
So, if you cannot find Adamsberg while walking in front of the 36 quai des Orfevres , the Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciaire, on the Île de la Cité between Pont Neuf and rue de la Cité, don't make your way to rue Chasle, where the three Evangelists (Marc Vandoosler, Lucien Devernois and Matthias Delamarre) live with the old Vandoolser in a big, decaying four-floor house better known as "the Rotten Hub": he cannot be there as the street does not exist.
And don't even try to find the
Brasserie des Philosopes, where
Adamsberg,
Adrien Danglard, his right-hand,
Violette Retancourt, a big blonde policewoman,
Helene Froissy and the other members of his team meet to discuss their cases; or
Le Viking in the
14th arrondissement, not far from to the
Cimitière de Montparnasse.
There, on the small Place Delambre, at the corner with rue Quinet, you will not find the smoking bar, but if you pay attention you can hear the echo of the thundering voice of the Brittany-born town-crier Joss, who announces public and private messages, news and ads three times a day. These places only exist in the pages of Have Mercy on Us All, Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand, This Night's Foul Work ...so, to discover Fred Vargas' Paris, you should do as her Commissaire does: look at the clouds, follow your intuition and senses, and let yourself be carried away by the special atmosphere you can experience while reading her stories.
Fred Vargas' Biography
From Wikipedia :
Fred Vargas is the pseudonym of French historian, archaeologist and
writer Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau, born in 1957 in Paris. She worked at
the French National Scientific Research Centre (
CNRS), which she joined in 1988. She later joined the
Institut Pasteur, as a eukaryotic archaeologist. She mostly writes police thrillers (
policiers).
They take place in Paris and feature the adventures of Chief Inspector
Adamsberg and his team. Her interest in the Middle Ages is manifest in
many of her novels, especially through the person of Marc Vandoosler, a
young specialist in the period.
