Vargas, Fred. The Chalk Circle Man: A Commissaire Adamsberg Mystery. Penguin: Penguin Group (USA). July 2009. c258p. Tr. from French by Siân Reynolds. ISBN 978-0-14-311595-3. pap. $14.00. Mystery.

In the first of eight novels featuring Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg (last seen in the U.S. in This Night’s Foul Work), the quirky commissaire has just been posted to police headquarters in the 5th arrondissement, where he is already renowned for his uncanny ability to solve murders by making leaps that defy logic. But after instantly solving one murder, he faces a much more complicated case: for four months, someone has been leaving blue chalk circles around found objects on the streets of Paris. While the city’s intellectuals argue whether the circles are the work of a cynical con artist or a genuine madman, Adamsberg senses something far more sinister. Then the first of several corpses turns up inside a chalk circle. VERDICT. As with other novels in this series, 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, vol. 134, no 11 (June 15, 2009), p. 64.