In haste . . .A few years ago I read (in translation) the first of Vargas's Commissaire Adamsberg novels, The Chalk Circle Man, and really did not get on with it: it had a mixture of whimsy, police procedural and woo that was more or less tailor-made to get my back up. The whimsy and the police-procedural I'm fine with; it's the supernatural component that gives me the problem. (And yet I'm fine with certain supernatural detective fictions. Just not that one. I don't claim to be consistent.)I wasn't going to try another Vargas but then, a few months ago, a blogging friend (I can't remember who it was) suggested that I might have been a bit overhasty in my judgement. So I tried this, the first of a different series.. . . and I found it absolutely charming. The whimsy is still here, but this time it's not battering its head against the alienating medium of the police procedural. And there's no bloody copout woo. As I read on, quite enraptured, a bell kept ringing at the back of my mind insisting that I'd had this gleeful love affair with whimsy long ago with some other piece of fiction totally unrelated to this one. And then I remembered: the last time I had this indulgent grin when reading a whimsical fiction was with Giovannino Guareschi's stories set in the little world of Don Camillo, a territory into which I periodically venture. No, The Three Evangelists isn't a sort of reincarnation of Camillo -- it's utterly dissimilar -- but it does somehow tickle the same whimsy bone of my cerebral cortex (or whatever).Three historians, each studying a different period (prehistory, Middle Ages, Great War) but all equally broke, rent a house in Paris that's been nicknamed in the neighborhood The Disgrace because it's so ramshackle. The three are called Marc, Matthias and Lucien; for obvious reasons Marc's godfather/uncle, a disgraced ex-cop who moves in with them, nicknames them The Three Evangelists.Their next-door neighbor, Sophia, once a famous opera singer, appears at their door with a curious request. She woke up one morning to find that someone had planted a sapling overnight in her garden. She knows it's neurotic of her, but she'd pay the Three Evangelists a goodly sum of money to dig the tree up and check there's no one buried underneath it. Broke, they accept the commission like a shot, later reporting to her that the soil beneath the tree is lych-free.Soon afterward, Sophia disappears. Has she been murdered? Has she run away with her old lover, a man far more glamorous than her mousy husband? Her devoted niece turns up on the doorstep, infant in tow, having come from the far end of the country by appointment; surely Aunt Sophia wouldn't have willingly run off rather than be here to greet her? And who's the ascetic type who arrives wanting to question Sophia about a decades-old double murder . . .?It's a great and very fairly clued mystery, but even had it not been I think I'd have enjoyed the book, because of the aforementioned charm. Thank you to the blogger who encouraged me to try Vargas again. There are two further Three Evangelists novels, according to Wikipedia, and I'll be looking out for them.
Descrizione di un risveglioCosa fare se il blocco del lettore ti attanaglia? Prendi un noir. Prendi Fred Vargas. Affonda le chiappe nella poltrona, posiziona i piedi davanti al focolare e leggi. L'elemento intrigante ti viene sbattuto in faccia dalla primissima battuta, ottima tattica per la pesca. Avanzando, fioriscono i personaggi. Un po' stereotipati, ho letto in giro. Sì, non lo nego: sono personaggi stilizzati che vivono in un mondo stilizzato, creato da loro stessi. Tre storici, ognuno appassionato a un periodo diverso: Mathias, la preistoria; Marc, il medioevo; Lucien, la Grande Guerra. Tre coinquilini che affittano una topaia di quattro piani e ci si sistemano a strati, come sedimenti dimenticati dalla storia e dal suo strascico. I tre evangelisti: san Matteo, san Marco, san Luca. Avanzando ancora, col giallo che ti viene sventolato costantemente sotto il naso, di fronte a personaggi che passano e non vengono notati sei tentato di sprofondare nuovamente nel tuo blocco del lettore. Impossibile scoprire l'assassino a metà libro, prima dei personaggi. E che diamine. Quando iniziano a scoprirlo il blocco ritorna, alza la voce, ti aspetta sulla soglia per intimorirti con il suo "torna con me". Poi, all'ultimo, ti accorgi che non avevi capito niente. Un classico, io devo essere decisamente lenta, un perfetto allocco, preda appetibile dei giallisti. (Momento di autocommiserazione)Le mie quattro stelline sono il risultato del puro godimento che ho tratto dalla lettura. Non è un libro particolarmente ben scritto, non è un giallo architettato in maniera avveniristica e non c'è attenzione per una caratterizzazione profonda dei personaggi. Ma non me ne importa niente: il mistero è aggrovigliato, e il nodo di cui è fatto somiglia tanto a quei deliziosi incroci tessuti da Daniel Pennac nella saga Malaussene. Nemmeno Pennac crea personaggi dalla forte caratterizzazione, anche Benjamin e Julie sono un po' la caricatura di loro stessi. Eppure ti entrano nel cuore. Come Marc coi suoi anelli e i suoi abiti neri, Mathias il taciturno, o Lucien l'incravattato, sempre pronto a dividere il mondo in trincee e fronti contrapposti. Quei tre evangelisti che osservano l'oggetto del mistero dalle loro finestre, come un gruppo di statue sul cocuzzolo di una chiesa. In fondo era questo ciò che mi serviva: una buona storia, ricamata d'umorismo e di personaggi affabili seppelliti nella loro nerdosità. Una storia che continua in altri due romanzi: forse anche la Vargas si sentiva dispiaciuta nel separarsene. E il blocco del lettore? C'è ancora, ma ha fatto un passo indietro e ha messo su un muso così con fare teatrale. Forse ci vorrà dell'altra Fred Vargas per convincerlo a non farsi più vedere.
What do You think about The Three Evangelists (2015)?
First Sentence: ‘Pierre, something’s wrong with the garden,’ said Sophia.Three young historians, Mathias, Marc and Lucian, and Marc’s ex-policeman uncle, Armand, buy a ramshackle house, known as the ‘disgrace’. When Armand sees the three young men standing each framed by a section of a gothic window, he coins them “the three evangelists.” Their neighbor, Sophia, is an former opera singer. When she finds a tree has been planted in her garden, it causes her worry. She hires the young men to dig it up, just to reassure her that nothing is planted under it. When Sophia disappears, the young men, with the help of Armand, are determined to find out what happened.I particularly like books which are character driven, and this certainly was. I loved the characters. Sophia, the retired opera singer worried about a tree which appears in her garden, the three evangelists, so named by Armand, an ex-flic and uncle to St. Mark (Marc the Middle Ages historian who always wears black), St. Martin (Mathias the Prehistoric historian who dislikes wearing clothes), and St. Luck (Lucian the Great Wars historian who always wears a tie). I felt Vargas really liked her characters and made me like them in turn. Even the house, in which the four men live, almost becomes a character in the story. The story is wonderfully plotted, escalating bit-by-bit to the final climatic reveal. The reveal itself was particularly well done as it wasn’t dry and unemotional, as most are, but filled with pain and disappointment.Perhaps because she is Parisian and writing about her own city, there wasn’t as strong a sense of place as I, a foreigner, might have liked. However, it is her familiarity with place that made me feel comfortable there as well. This was one of the better translations. The dialogue worked very well, particularly the occasional banter between the principal characters. Vargas’ writing captivates me. It is filled with warmth, humor and emotion. I highly recommend it.THE THREE EVANGELISTS (Ama. Sleu-3 historians and godfather-Paris-Cont) – VG+Vargas, Fred – standaloneVintage, 2006, UK paperback – ISBN: 9780099469551
—LJ
Three impoverished thirty something historians pool their resources and rent and begin to restore a crumbling ancient house in Paris. Marc, the medievalist is impatient, impulsive, intuitive. Mathias studies early man, is a hunter gatherer by nature and resists wearing clothes whenever possible, but he can gently persuade almost anyone to tell him almost anything. Lucien is obsessed with the Great War and sees everything in the context of that conflict, always wears a tie, and loves to cook. The fourth member of the household is Armand letting a murderer escape. It is Vandoosler who nicknames the three Vandoosler, Marc's uncle and godfather, an ex-cop who was fired for the evangelists as a joke, but it sticks.The action, such as it is, begins when their neighbor Sophia, a retired opera singer, finds that some unknown person has planted a beech tree inside her walled garden. It worries her - is it an obsessed fan? A disappointed lover? A prank or a threat? She pays the Evangelists to dig up the tree but they find nothing suspicious and replant it.When Sophia disappears soon after, just as her niece was arriving to live nearby with her young son, the evangelists and Juliet, the neighbor whose restaurant has become a second home, are worried. The police don't see a crime, her husband doesn't seem worried.And then her car is found burned out, with a body inside. The police fasten on the niece as the likely suspect even though the husband has a longstanding mistress. The Evangelists are determined to prove her innocent and find the true culprit. They use their research skills and their individual strengths to come up with the surprising answer to who killed their friend.The characters are wonderfully, endearingly eccentric. Vargas really gets the obsessive traits underlying scholarly specialization very well and their academic debates are great fun. Armand's combination of skill and cynicism keeps the younger men on track. The plot has enough twists to remain engaging till the end. The writing manages to be both light handed and seriously good. The Parisian scene is wonderfully detailed almost by the by - it's not a travelogue, but there is a terrific sense of place.
—Monica
As usual Vargas’s characters are quirkily French and her crime novel bears no resemblance to the standard of the genre. In this case we have three impoverished historians (all from different time periods and dismissive of the other’s interest) plus a disgraced ex-cop uncle all living in a run down house in Paris. The inciting incident is a tree that is planted overnight in their neighbor’s garden by person(s) unknown. What transpires next is largely a long exploration of character that I found less compelling than the other two I read, and a more interesting third act when there is some (inept at times) investigating of the neighbor’s murder and things are tied up. We only are given enough information late in the book to have any hope of working it out, and Vandoosler is not as compelling as Adamsberg, her standard inspector.
—Simone Sinna
