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Fred Vargas

Seeking Whom He May Devour Hardcover – 7 March 2007

by Fred Vargas (Author)

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Each day, inhabitants of a small community in the French Alps find another of their ewes with its throat cut. When one of the villagers too is killed people begin to wonder: could it be the work of a werewolf Soon suspicion falls on Massart, one of the villagers, because of his beardlessness (according to popular legend, werewolves have no hair on their bodies because they are inside the body).Soliman, the victim's adopted son; Le Veilleur, a lonely sheperd and Camille, a lovely girl from the city, decide to pursue Massart and their hunt leads them into the Alps, but their incompetence is undisguisable and they decide to summon Commissaire Adamsberg x80x94 well known for his peculiar investigation methods x80x94 to help. Thanks to his extraordinary intuition, Adamsberg unearths an astonishing truth, one that the villagers are going to find hard to believe.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Print length

467 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Thorndike Pr
Publication date

7 March 2007
Dimensions

15.24 x 2.54 x 22.86 cm
ISBN-10

078629356X
ISBN-13

978-0786293568
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Thorndike Pr; Lrg edition (7 March 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 467 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 078629356X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0786293568
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.24 x 2.54 x 22.86 cm

Customer Reviews:
155 ratings

Fred Vargas
140
Paperback
10 offers from $15.33
Fred Vargas
393
Paperback
8 offers from $19.99
Fred Vargas
182
Paperback
7 offers from $19.99
Fred Vargas
137
Paperback
8 offers from $19.99
Fred Vargas
197
Paperback
11 offers from $22.46
Fred Vargas
334
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13 offers from $19.99

About the author

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Fred Vargas

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Fred Vargas was born in Paris in 1957. As well as being a best-selling author in France, she is an historian and archaeologist.

She worked at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), which she joined in 1988. She later joined the Institut Pasteur, as a eukaryotic archaeologist.

She mostly writes police thrillers (policiers). They take place in Paris and feature the adventures of Chief Inspector Adamsberg and his team. Her interest in the Middle Ages is manifest in many of her novels, especially through the person of Marc Vandoosler, a young specialist in the period. Seeking Whom He May Devour was shortlisted by the British Crime Writers' Association for the last Gold Dagger award for best crime novel of the year, and the following year The Three Evangelists won the inaugural Duncan Lawrie International Dagger. She also won the award for the second year-running with Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand.

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5 star		57%
4 star		27%
3 star		9%
2 star		5%
1 star		2%

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Barnaby Richard Evans

Poor translation: woolly story

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 May 2019

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I have now read all of the Commissaire Adamsberg books and have even ordered the new one ("This Poison Will Remain"), so I do like the series. However, "Seeking Whom He May Devour" is very poor. The story is monotonous for the first 60% of the book (Kindle version) and only really gets going when Adamsberg becomes involved. I do wonder to what extent this book has been ruined by the poor translation and it would be interesting to re-read it if Sian Reynolds ever does a translation

2 people found this helpful

Janie U

OK book in here somewhere just very well hidden

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 February 2013

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This is a translation so it is difficult to comment on whether some aspects of the book are the fault of the author or the narrator but someone must take the responsiblity.
The writing is straight forward which should make it an easy read but I found it took a long time as the language and style is very jarring.
All through the characters are explained well and they manage to avoid some very stupid plot twists which often happen in this type of book. Has to be said though that I found it hard to find any level of engagement with the characters - Soliman was just impossible, Watchee was interesting but then behaved out of character.
Oddly, I struggled to place the time setting of the story. At some points the technology is very advanced but then they have difficulty with a mobile which doesn't fit. There is also a huge opportunity missed with the geographical setting - this area is beautiful and the landscape should be a bigger part of the book than it is, had this happened then the atmosphere would have been more appropriate to the plot. Also more time should have been given to the mountain communities with their beliefs, culture and legends.
I thought the translation was terrible, to the point that I had to look up the person who did it as I was convinced that they could not have been a native English speaker, although it turns out she is. Some examples "Nobody said anything, pregnantly." - what is this about??? - "You'll be in the slammer for the rest of your twatty lives" - are we in the London East End in the 1960s?? The plot is OK but completely spoilt by the clumsy language around it.
A link is established with Adamsberg early in the plot but then not explored until we almost forget about him. As a character, he stands out from the rest as having some interest (although I was very curious how he could drop his normal day job so easily and what is the distraction with the woman trying to kiil him?). He does bring the book to life when he gets involved and the other characters feed off him. With him in the plot, the book develops into a fairly standard police novel, the final third is much more readable than the rest of the book but I didn't find the procedures believable.
At the end there is a full explanation by way of a police statement which was a great way to wind up the story, there should be more endings like this in crime fiction.
Reading this for a book club, I had to plod on with it (I'd have put it down after a few pages normally) and eventually got the feeling that there was an interesting story hidden away, trouble is that it was very well hidden. Unless you are already a fan of Fred Vargas I would recommend you pass this one by - I won't pick up any more of hers!!

One person found this helpful

clive wilson

Not her best.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 January 2020

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I usually like Fred Vargas’s books but found this tedious and poorly constructed. The setup takes an age to wade through and the plot is transparent. An aberration for this usually fine author.

Jerry C.B.

Quirky enjoyable read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 December 2013

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An out of the ordinary detective novel,where the culprit can be guessed very early on and the detective plays a relatively small but vital role.Three amateur sleuths provide the main thread of the story and their developing inter-relationships most of the quirky humour.They are likeable well-written characters and although the story is somewhat far-fetched almost throughout,it certainly does not feel like a wasted journey;leaving the reader satisfied and keen to read more Fred Vargas "Adamsberg"novels.

Clare

Nice to have a 'Camille book' in tis series

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 February 2014

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I read this last in the Adamsberg series because of the translation comments below (with which I totally agree). Camille is a very shadowy offstage character in the other books, which is unusual and really interesting. However, while I wouldn't want this any different for the series as a whole, it was nice to get a single book with her as the central character and to get an impression of her through her own or a narrator's eyes rather than just those of Adamsberg and his colleagues.

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Seeking Whom He May Devour Hardcover – 7 March 2007

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Fred Vargas

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