An Uncertain Place - Couverture souple

Three-times winner of the CWA International Dagger for Crime Fiction

'This is crime fiction writing at its most intriguing' Marie Claire

Commissaire Adamsberg has left Paris for a police conference in London, accompanied by anglophile Commandant Danglard and Estalere, a young sergeant. The city offers a welcome change of scenery until a gruesome discovery is made - just outside the gates of Highgate Cemetery a pile of shoes, all containing severed feet, is found.

Returning to Paris, the three men are then confronted with the violent killing and dismemberment of a wealthy old man. Both the dead man's son and gardener have motives for murder, but soon another candidate for the killing emerges. As Adamsberg investigates the links between these two unsettling crimes, he puts himself at terrible risk.

'A thrilling read' Sunday Times

'An Uncertain Place is full of wit and invention, with a plot that satisfies both intellect and emotion' Times Literary Supplement

'[Vargas is] one of the most exciting, addictive and inventive purveyor of classy crime fiction currently pounding the publishing beat' Independent on Sunday

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.

A Climate of Fear, the latest Commissaire Adamsberg mystery, will soon be available from Penguin.