Introducing Fred Vargas: Commissioner Adamsberg, the Anti-flic as Interpreter of Signs

This essay examines the main recurrent character of France’s acclaimed crime fiction writer, Fred Vargas. The author, born Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau, works as an archeologist at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. In her spare time over the past twenty years, she has produced a literate opus of detective novels and short stories whose main focus is a human comedy of interesting characters. In L’homme aux cercles bleus, Vargas introduced Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, who would reappear in five subsequent novels. Commissioner Adamsberg, the “anti-flic,” hardly a classic detective, relies on intuition to interpret signs in order to solve cases.