Detective Biography: Commissaire Adamsberg

Officer name: Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg

Overview: Police Nationale, 5th arrondissement, municipal Paris, where his deputy is Adrien Danglard, a methodical police inspector and the father of five children.

Location: Paris, France.

Nationality: French.

Physical Description:

1.71m tall

Irregular, discordant features – a large and fairly hooked nose, well-defined lips, a swarthy complexion, hollow cheeks, receding chin, dark hair, brown eyes. He frequently looks dishevelled, causing other members of the police force to want to apologise for his appearance.

Marital Status:

Adamsberg lives alone, although he has a turbulent relationship with Camille Forestier.

Personnel assessment notes:

Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg is one of the Parisian police forces’ most unusual and unorthodox members. He tends to ignore clues and obvious suspects – and often arrests people with strong alibis. He is a dreamer, often seeming distracted, and colleagues are frequently baffled by his amazing success rate. He has a deep understanding of human nature, allowing him to predict suspect’s moves before they themselves make them.

Case of note:

A woman’s daughter has seen a vision: ghostly horsemen who target the most nefarious characters in Normandy. Since the middle ages there have been stories of murderers, rapists, those with serious crimes on their conscience, meeting a grizzly end following a visitation by the riders.

Soon after the young woman’s vision a notoriously cruel man disappears. The matter is dismissed by local police as superstition. Although the case is far outside his jurisdiction, Adamsberg agrees to investigate the strange happenings in a village terrorised by wild rumours and ancient feuds.

For a full report, read The Ghost Riders of Ordebec.

To continue or begin the Commissaire Adamsberg series by author, Fred Vargas, see below for a list of the Commissaire Adamsberg series in order (starting with the first published). Click on the buy buttons to read a free extract.

Further reading:
An interview with author and creator of Commissaire Adamsberg, Fred Vargas in the Telegraph.
Other featured detective biographies – Harry Hole, Kurt Wallander, Alex Cross, Maeve Kerrigan