A Climate of Fear

by Fred Vargas Narrated by Chris MacDonnell

Overview

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 island for two weeks, surrounded by a thick, impenetrable fog rumored to be summoned by an ancient local demon. Two of them didn't make it back alive. But how are the deaths linked to the secretive Association for the Study of the Writings of Maximilien Robespierre? And what does the mysterious symbol signify?

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

01/09/2017
In Vargas’s captivating eighth Commissaire Adamsberg mystery (after 2013’s The Ghost Riders of Ordebec), the dreamily brilliant Paris police commissioner, assisted by his baffled, balky team of underlings, investigates the deaths of members of the Association for the Study of the Writings of Maximilien Robespierre, a group devoted to studying the French Revolution. The first victim, Alice Gauthier, ran a bath, took off her shoes, climbed into the water fully clothed, and then apparently slit her wrists, but Adamsberg suspects foul play. A decade earlier, Gauthier made an ill-fated trip to an island off of Iceland. When the second victim turns out to have been on the same trip, Adamsberg is sure there’s a link between the present-day murders and a tragedy that occurred on the Icelandic island back then. Acting on his intuition, the policeman decides to lead an expedition to the island, reputed to be haunted by an Arctic demon, in the hope of finding some answers. Vargas keeps introducing unexpected, fascinating new plot elements, even as the action totters on the brink of absurdity. (Mar.)

From the Publisher

"[A Climate of Fear] delights with its interesting characters, engaging dialogue, and infectious sense of curiosity about the lives of others.”—Kirkus Reviews

"Captivating... Vargas keeps introducing unexpected, fascinating new plot elements, even as the action totters on the brink of absurdity."—Publishers Weekly

Praise for Fred Vargas and her Commissaire Adamsberg Mysteries 

“Vargas writes with the startling imagery and absurdist wit of a latter-day Anouilh, about fey characters who live in a wonderful bohemian world that never was but should have been.”—The New York Times Book Review 

“A wildly imaginative series.”—The New York Times
 
“Spry, ironic, yet fully engaged with the horror of contemporary reality”—Los Angeles Times
 
 “It's a full, rich and strange plate.”—Seattle Times
 
“[A] high degree of intelligence, sophistication and perversity informs [Vargas’] fiction…I continue to be delighted by the workings of [her] imagination. It’s a tangled web she weaves, and a hard one to escape.”—Patrick Anderson, The Washington Post 
 
“Few crime stories are as apt to leave a reader wondering so ardently: Who dunnit?...Vargas’ characters are like something out of a fairy tale – eternal opposites, ever-renewing archetypes despite their fresh adventures each time. That’s why each novel’s opening feels new.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer 
 
“Anyone who enjoys kooky characters and intricate detail will happily follow Vargas along.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Readers should settle in to be unsettled. Delight is found not so much in the details of plot as in the oddities of character. The crime, the suspects, and the commissaire are all pleasantly off-kilter and equally baffling. A definite pick for Francophile mystery buffs who also enjoy Georges Simenon's Maigret series and Pierre Magnan (Death in the Truffle Wood).”—Library Journal
 
“As droll and fascinating as la ville lumière itself.”—Kirkus Reviews  
 
“Adamsberg, always an intuitive sleuth rather than a rational one, is the perfect hero for a series where reality is always a moving target.”—Booklist 

"Worlds that closely resemble the real one, except that beliefs, tales, apparitions, even professions, from the Middle Ages fit in seamlessly."—The Philadelphia Inquirer
 
“Vargas is, by some distance, the hottest property in contemporary crime fiction.”—The Guardian (London)

Library Journal - Audio

07/01/2017
Commissaire Adamsberg's tenth series installment, the second available in audio in the United States, finds him and his team embroiled in an investigation that runs them to numerous parts of France and finally to Iceland. The first suicide seems routine, but a mysterious symbol at the scene tickles Adamsberg's suspicion, and as bodies pile up, the victims are found to have visited a remote island off Iceland's shore, a day trip turned into a two-week nightmare. Another connection ties victims to a historical society formed to reenact meetings of the revolution's Committee of Public Safety. The plot is complex and rich with historical detail but short on action. Repetitive dialog among the detectives slows movement. Chris MacDonnell's beautifully accented, precise reading adds more weight. VERDICT While Vargas has won numerous international mystery and thriller awards, she is not well known in the United States. This book, which stands well alone, is a good introduction. ["An entertaining atmospheric mystery, touched with a soupçon of the supernatural": LJ Xpress Reviews 3/3/17 review of the Penguin hc.]—Janet Martin, formerly with Southern Pines P.L., NC

Library Journal

11/01/2016
A four-time winner of the International Crime Writers' Association's International Dagger Award, Paris-based Vargas returns with another policier starring Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg. Here, the commissaire must reckon with the murder of two people who were part of an expedition to Iceland gone catastrophically wrong ten years earlier.

Kirkus Reviews

2017-01-23
A pair of suspicious suicides are linked to each other and to the "godforsaken rock" that irrevocably changed the victims' lives a decade ago.In April in Paris, there's still a nip in the air, so conditions aren't ideal for frail Alice Gauthier to take a walk. When she suffers a fall, Marie-France, a helpful passer-by, gathers the contents of her spilled purse, noticing an unsent letter only after the lady is on her way. The day after Marie-France duly posts the letter, Madame Gauthier is found dead in her bathtub, an apparent suicide. But when Commissaire Adamsberg (An Uncertain Place, 2011, etc.) and his sidekick, Danglard, investigate, many small details argue against a ruling of suicide, and a scrawled Cyrillic character near the body is a genuine conundrum. Not long afterward, esteemed chemist Henri Masfauré shoots himself, and Danglard finds a letter to him from Madame Gauthier at the crime scene. It links them via an expedition to Iceland a decade ago that ended in tragedy. When Adamsberg and Danglard track down the other members of the party, they are unsurprisingly met with obfuscation and lies. Yet another alleged suicide, this one involving a knife in the belly, raises the stakes in the duo's pursuit of a bold and perhaps desperate serial killer. The intricate eighth installment in this Parisian series delights with its interesting characters, engaging dialogue, and infectious sense of curiosity about the lives of others.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171359744
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	03/07/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

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