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AN UNCERTAIN PLACE
by Fred Vargas, and Siān Reynolds, trans
Harvill Secker, May 2011
408 pages
$22.00 CAD
ISBN: 1846554454


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

With the publication of AN UNCERTAIN PLACE, unilingual English readers are now all but caught up with the adventures of Commissaire Adamsberg, except for L'armée furieuse, and that only came out in French a couple of weeks ago. For a wonder, the English title this time is a direct translation of the original French, so we no longer have to try to figure out whether WASH THIS BLOOD CLEAN FROM MY HAND is Sous les ventes de Neptune or Dans les bois éternels.

As the book opens, Adamsberg is on foreign territory - London, to be precise, where he has been sent to attend a conference on a subject he does not care about in a language he does not understand. But something is familiar - a bizarre event, just like back in Paris. A parade of old shoes is lined up just outside Highgate Cemetery, toes pointed toward the gate and detached feet still inside. They appear to be demanding entrance to grounds that have a lurid reputation for being the un-resting place of vampires, including, possibly, Lizzie Siddal, wife and muse to Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Intriguing as all this may be, Adamsberg and his companions, Commandant Danglard, whose fluent English has proved invaluable, and the young Sergeant Estalčre, along for the experience, must return to France where they are plunged into a bizarre mystery of their own. A murder has been committed in suburban Garches. The victim has been totally annihilated, his body reduced to scraps so completely that only DNA can provide a certain identification. Before long, an identical crime is reported as having occurred in Austria, where the perpetrator has been dubbed the Zerquetscher, the Crusher. In no time, Adamsberg meets him and hears his startling assertions. And then he and Danglard are off on the trail of a vampire, or at least the story of one, which leads them to Serbia, where Adamsberg discovers the ability to remember sentences in Serbian whereas a simple English word (Highgate, for example) continues to defeat him.

In this appearance, Adamsberg struck me as being more approachable as a character than has in earlier books. He is still, certainly, as irritatingly intuitive as ever, but he also reveals a greater vulnerability than he has in some of his earlier appearances. At times, he seems almost normally human. He is, as the title suggests, in an uncertain place and he is not altogether comfortable with uncertainty.

As she has in the past, Siān Reynolds provides an immensely readable version of Vargas' witty, inventive, and literate French text.

§ Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal.

Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, June 2011

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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