"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 wildly imaginative series.”—
The New York Times
From the #1 bestselling French author and four-time winner of the Crime Writers' Association's International Dagger Award.
When Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, the chief of police in Paris's seventh arrondissement, is called to the scene of a ghastly and highly unusual murder, he thinks it can't have anything to do with the nine pairs of shoes and severed feet discovered outside of London's Highgate Cemetery just a few days earlier. With the help of the murdered man's gifted physician, Adamsberg delves into the victim's disturbed psyche and unexpectedly finds himself on a path that takes him deep into the haunted past of Eastern Europe, where a centuries-old horror has come to life and is claiming victims far and wide.