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Parisian police Superintendent Adamsberg and some of his staff are going to fly to Quebec, Canada to learn about DNA evidence gathering. But all is not going smoothly. One of his men is certain that the plane will never get to Canada, and Adamsberg himself reads a recent newspaper article and is again obsessed with a murderer he had been looking for many years ago. The killer, Judge Fulgence, had at one time owned a large house in the same small town where Adamsberg's family lived. During that time Adamsberg's brother had been accused of murdering his girlfriend. His brother had no memory of that night but was certain he didn't kill her. Adamsberg, a young man at that time, investigated and discovered that others had been killed in the same way. It was reported that they had been stabbed three times in a row, but Adamsberg discovered they all had really been killed with a Trident. In the killings, people had been arrested for the murders, but all of them have no memory of that night. He also discovered that these murders started in 1949 and that Judge Fulgence was guilty of all of them, but because of his name and power, no one would agree to look at the evidence in the way Adamsberg suggested. So Judge Fulgence was free to continue doing his ghastly deeds until it was reported that the judge had died. Now suddenly there seems to be murders again, all committed in the same way. Could the judge still be alive? When Adamsberg tells people his theory, they all look at him as if he is mad. After all, the Judge is dead, and even if he were still alive he would be too old to be a killer. Off the Paris cops go to Quebec to learn about DNA. In Canada Adamsberg meets a strange young woman, has an affair and then she insists that she is pregnant with his child and he must take her back to Paris and get married. Adamsberg refuses to even consider what she says. He's upset and a few days later he gets drunk and can't remember what he did that night. When he gets back to Paris he is called to return to Canada because of a murder that occurred. The Canadian police say that Adamsberg can assist them. Back he goes to Quebec only to discover that he is the prime suspect in the murder, for the victim is the woman with whom he had the affair. She was stabbed three times in a perfect row, just like the other Judge Fulgence victims! The Canadian police are confident he is guilty, but Adamsberg is certain that Judge Fulgence has set him up. But again, when he states his theory people look at him as if he is crazy. He realizes that it must be up to him to find a way to prove he is innocent and that Judge Fulgence is still around, killing at will. This is the first that I've read of the Superintendent Adamsberg series but I discovered that it is the fifth of the series. I am surprised, mainly because the book reads as if its characters are too strange and unusual to be written about more than once. All of Adamsberg's friends are extremely bizarre people who don't seem to fit in a normal world. His right-hand man is strange and filled with personality problems, his lieutenant is a woman who knows how she can appear invisible to others and she has talents and abilities in many extremely atypical subjects. One elderly women who helps him is filled with almost Buddha-like wisdom and the other 80-something year old woman, is a first-rate hacker who manages to get into every secret database. In the end, Adamsberg and his friends can't be seen as anything but quirky. Maybe if this book had been set in a strange alternative universe right from the start, all the unusual people who are on Adamsberg's side would fit in. But the world that we are introduced to in the beginning seems to be this humdrum universe. The final clues Adamsberg comes across that prove the case for him didn't make any logical sense to me. And it is the type of book that slows down as it gets to the end, rather than speeding to the climax. All that did was make me scan the pages to see if something, anything happens. As you can glean from the title, WASH THIS BLOOD CLEAN FROM MY HAND is written for those who admire literary dramatic excesses. It's a book for those who want their reading to be over the top and self-satisfied. It is well written, but for me, a worthy mystery needs more than pages of twisting plots and outrageous characters doing amazing mental jumps. For me a mystery must, in the end, make logical sense and must ring true. WASH THIS BLOOD CLEAN FROM MY HAND does neither.
Reviewed by A. L. Katz, August 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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