Book abandoned. I like Fred Vargas and the quirky Commissaire Adamsberg, but this story was just too far-fetched, the translation too clunky for me to persist past the first 50 pages. ( )

Liked the supernatural underpinnings of the story , the quirky characters and the animals. Will definitely try others in the series , though I did find the resolution a bit disappointing ( )

I picked up The Ghost Riders of Ordebec because it shared the Golden Dagger award with Pierre LeMaitre’s Alex a book I really enjoyed. Vargas’ novel is the latest in her Commissaire Adamsberg series, centred on a French policeman from the provinces who apparently has a Zen-like approach to investigations.

The book deals with two parallel investigations. The principal plot line kicks off when a woman from the Normandy village of Ordebec visits Adamsberg in Paris to seek his help with a mysterious event; her daughter has witnessed the legendary Ghost Riders, who carry off the wicked to their deaths. The daughter identified three local trouble-makers being carried off, but couldn’t identify the fourth. The first of them has already been killed; could there be more murders on the way.

The second crime is a car arson that claims the life of a wealthy industrialist. A local firebug, Mo, is the immediate focus of police attention, but Adamsberg has his doubts.

I felt in reading this book that I was a bit lacking in background to the main characters, a problem I often find when coming into detective series in the middle. Authors assume you know what they are on about when that is not always the case. The relationship between Adamsberg and his newly-found son was clearly a key ingredient of the previous book, but i couldn’t quite grasp it. I was also unclear whether there was some prior relationship with Mo that caused Adamsberg to go into bat for him. I also felt that there was more to the regular characters than I was picking up; each has foibles that fairly obviously are carried over from previous novels.

Ghost Riders is a pretty unremarkable police procedural really, although there are a few plot twists at the end that kept me guessing. I didn’t think it was anywhere near as creepy, exciting and original as Alex, which I far preferred as a crime novel. ( )

El infalible comisario Adamsberg tendrá que enfrentarse a una terrorífica leyenda medieval normanda, la del Ejército Furioso: una horada de muertos vivientes que recorre los bosques tomándose la justicia por su mano...
Una señora menuda, procedente de Normandía, espera a Adamsberg en la acera. No están citados, pero ella no quiere hablar con nadie más que con él. Una noche, su hija vio en el pueblo al Ejército Furioso. Asesinos, ladrones y todos aquellos que no tienen la conciencia tranquila se sienten amenazados. Esta vieja leyenda será la señal de partida para una serie de asesinatos que se van a producir. Ayudado por la gendarmería local, por su hijo Zerk y por sus singulares colaboradores habituales, Adamsberg investigará y tratará de proteger de su macabro destino a las víctimas de este Ejército Furioso.

Over the past couple of decades, French author Fred Vargas (real name Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau) has emerged as one of the leading international writers of crime fiction, thanks to her two sets of novels featuring, respectively, the reluctant amateur sleuths known as "The Three Evangelists" and Commissaire Adamsberg and his team of Paris detectives.

One may get an idea of Vargas's quirky style from the opening chapter of this 2011 Adamsberg novel, which could well work as a stand-alone short story. Adamsberg starts his day with an investigation involving the death of an old woman who apparently chokes on a piece of bread. However, things are not what they seem and the Commissaire finds himself suspecting the dead woman's husband. The chapter combines bittersweet humour and wry insights into human foibles with a neat little puzzle which will delight traditionally-minded crime readers.

The novel "proper" is a darker affair. An unprepossessing widow from Ordebec calls on Adamsberg and pleads with him to investigate some mysterious goings-on at her native village. Her daughter Lina has had a terrifying vision of four local men being carried away by the mythical "Furious Army": a horde of undead horsemen who, since medieval times, have wrought vengeance for unpunished crimes. The Commissaire is sceptical until he travels to the Normandy village and the body of the first victim of the otherwordly horsemen is discovered. He becomes increasingly embroiled in the investigation, as the Ghost Riders strike again.

It is no spoiler to reveal that there is a very human agency at work behind the gruesome deaths. Nonetheless, the novel successfully taps into medieval Northern myths to build an atmosphere of supernatural dread. It is at its best when the action is set amongst the mists of Normandy, a bleak yet haunting landscape peopled by eccentric and grotesque characters. Indeed, sometimes it feels like a Southern Gothic novel transplanted from the "New World" to a very old one.

As is typical in such works, the Commissaire and his team solve a couple of "side" mysteries along the way. The subplots flesh out the narrative, and allow for the development of the secondary characters. Nevertheless, they do dampen the momentum somewhat. I also had reservations about the solution when it eventually arrived.

This is a cut above your average crime caper, and a deserved winner of the 2013 CWA International Crime Dagger (jointly with Pierre Lemaitre's "Alex"). Siân Reynolds provides a fine and idiomatic translation. However, ultimately "The Ghost Riders of Ordebec" is one of those reads in which the journey is more enjoyable than the destination itself. ( )