This Poison Will Remain

Commissaire Adamsberg Mystery, Book 7

By: Fred Vargas

Narrated by: Chris MacDonnell

"Wry humor and offbeat plots blend with a subtly dangerous charm to make Fred Vargas the queen of French crime writers." (Martin Walker, author of the Bruno, Chief of Police series)

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 since childhood, when they lived in a local orphanage called The Mercy. There, they had belonged to a small group of violent young boys known as the "band of recluses." Adamsberg faces two obstacles: the third man killed by the same venom was not part of the "band of recluses", and the amount of spider venom necessary to kill doesn't add up.

Yet after the Nîmes deaths, more members of the old band succumb to recluse bites, leading the commissaire to uncover the tragedy hidden behind the walls of the orphanage.

©2017 Fred Vargas and Flammarion, English translation copyright 2019 by Sian Reynolds (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Another successful story!

The Adamsberg series is one of my favorite detectives of all time. Quirky Intelligent thoughtful heartfelt layers and layers of depth of character and unexpected turns. Characters that engage, a storyline while perhaps not her best, certainly enjoyable and engaging throughout the book. Fred Vargas is a nerds delight utilizing in depth writing that Integrates her specific interests and skills. My only complaint is that not all the books in the detective series are on audible.com.

Very Good - Deserves to be read

This is my favorite of her books and I actually wish I had read it -- the best books deserve to be read not just listened to. This one held together, weaving myth, zoology, sociology, and memory together as it tightened toward the killer (which I did not see coming, and I consider myself good at guessing these things). Love the somewhat remote but observant humanity of Adamsberg. And the narrator is one of the best on audible, with that crisp British accent yet he somehow manages to distinguish women (which most male narrators are god awful at) without being irritatingly mincing.

The X-Files meet the French

This was a very interesting and different police procedural. Basically, if you recall the TV show The X-Files this book is in the same genre. There’s a series of deaths that apparently are not connected and seemed to be the results of elderly men being bitten by a poisonous spider, however, this far far more involved well worth the time and effort to read or listen to this one.