It's a 50/50 this time, parts I like and parts I don't. Pro: to see under the same roof Adamsberg, the old Vandoosler and the three evangelists :-D ; the way Vargas writes and her world of bizarre characters ; Danglard helping Camille when she wants to run away, leaving him with the stray cat that followed her home ; Danglard taking the little cat to work, and the cat sleeping on his feet :-)
Cons: too much tragedy, in a way; Adamsberg being a jerk, sleeping with a girl forgetting Camille was to go to him that night, and then sort-of-complaining that she disappeared and didn't call him... thinking: it was just a collision, there have been and there will be, but that's nothing to do with you... I say she should run away and never come back, and to hell with that man that seems to not are about anything, wanting what he wants but not caring about what the others want.
The story is a bit peculiar, with all that talking about the Great Plague, the Black Death, when five people are strangled and dirtied with coal. Another peculiar aspect is that this book is not great on justice: Decambrais years ago was a teacher charged with assault against a girl: six months in prison, which seems not enough if that was true, but actually too much since he was innocent, he protected her but the school saw him with her still in shock and believed the worst: understandable in a way, but it's not cleared why nobody asked the girl, or what she said. Damas was imprisoned for five years charged with the murder of his girlfriend: it is believed he pushed her out of the window. Again, Damas was not only innocent, but both he and his girlfriend had been victims of horrible tortures by seven people payed for it, and none of them was ever found by the police. Until now, that is, because five of them are now the five dead.
Joss Le Guern did indeed beat a man, but it was because he made Joss go at sea with a too-old-boat to save money, and there were deaths when it sank, and yet Joss got nine months in jail while those responsible for the boat sinking were protected by money and position.
Adamsberg says the three torturers still alive will pay for it, but we don't see it and I reserve to doubt about that!
A thing that puzzled me is that this is clearly the third Adamsberg book, okay, but it is said that he has just been transferred from the fifth to the 13th arrondissement, which makes me think: before any Kehlweiler book then, but no, because here Marc already works as a cleaning guy, so the timing is all wrong, because in 'un peu plus lion sur la droite' Marc had not yet started that work, he was helping Louis...
Anyway, back to the end of the book, Damas and his grandma really believed they had unleashed the black death upon those men, but someone else strangled them. His father, a violent bastard, had a son and a daughter with another woman but never gave them money, so now stepsister Marie-Belle wants it, so she plans to have Damas arrested and then inherit everything their father left. She convinced her younger brother to do it.
I had the name right, but I had thought of the opposite motive: I thought she killed them because she knew his way would not work and she said she always took care of him so she helped him without telling him because he was delusional and after what he had been through she had to do something for him... basically the complete opposite. I thought for love but she did it for money and envy and hate (Damas would have given her the money if she had asked for it).
At the end she escapes.
Le Guern's job of reading messages at the public place was really 'colourful'.
I liked to see Marc consulted by Adamsberg, but this is not the book I'd like to re-read. Of the six I've read, this is n.5, with the former n.5 now down to n.6.
ITA: Parti in fretta e non tornare
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