Fred Vargas

"As the chief of police in Paris's seventh arrondissement, Commissaire Adamsberg has no jurisdiction in Ordebec. Yet, he cannot ignore a widow's plea. Her daughter Lina has seen a vision of the Ghost Riders with four nefarious men. According to the thousand-year-old legend, the vision means that the men will soon die a grisly death. When one of them disappears, Adamsberg races to Ordebec, where he becomes entranced by the gorgeous Lina--and embroiled...

"A murder in Paris brings Commissaire Adamsberg out of the Icelandic mists of his previous investigation and unexpectedly into the region of Nîmes, where three old men have died of spider bites. The recluse has a sneaky attack, but is that enough to explain the deaths of these men, all killed by the same venom?At the National Museum of Natural History, Adamsberg meets a pensioner who tells him that two of the three octogenarians have known each other...

"A woman is found murdered in her bathtub, and the murder has been made to look like a suicide. But a strange symbol found at the crime scene leads the local police to call Commissaire Adamsberg and his team. When the symbol is found near the body of a second disguised suicide, a pattern begins to emerge: both victims were part of a disastrous expedition to Iceland over ten years ago where a group of tourists found themselves trapped on a deserted...

When strange blue chalk circles start appearing overnight on the pavements of Paris, the press take up the story with amusement and psychiatrists trot out their theories. Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, a policeman, is alone in thinking that this is not a game and far from amusing.

"-- Le dolmen dont tu m'as parlé, Johan, il est bien sur la route du petit pont ? -- À deux kilomètres après le petit pont, ne te trompe pas. Sur ta gauche, tu ne peux pas le manquer. Il est splendide, toutes ses pierres sont encore debout. -- Ça date de quand, un dolmen ? -- Environ quatre mille ans. -- Donc des pierres pénétrées par les siècles. C'est parfait pour moi. -- Mais parfait pour quoi ? -- Et cela servait à quoi, ces dolmens...